


Company Manners

by Lomonaaeren



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Emotional Manipulation, M/M, Masks, Politics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-25
Updated: 2013-02-26
Packaged: 2017-12-03 15:34:48
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 43,472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/699810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lomonaaeren/pseuds/Lomonaaeren
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Draco hasn’t seen Harry in several years due to being out of England. On attending a Ministry party, he’s astonished and delighted to discover that Harry is now the public face of the Ministry, poised and self-confident and witty. Harry, who regards his company manners as a mask rather than a real part of his personality, is less than receptive when Draco attempts to express his interest in a relationship based on them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Though there's some angst in this story, it's largely flangst.

_That…that can’t be…_  
  
“Potter?” Draco asked, but no one was near enough to hear his stunned whisper, or see the way his eyes had widened. Draco recognized that as a good thing, of course. No one in attendance at this party was someone whom he _wanted_ to see him in a moment of weakness.  
  
But it had taken him an instant to remember that he had an audience, a good sign of how much his surprise had affected him. Draco promptly leaned back in his chair, adopted a mask of leisurely goodwill, and sipped the glass of wine that Blaise had offered him when Draco sat down at his table.  
  
He couldn’t keep his eyes from tracking Potter, though. That was all right. Given that Blaise was talking so loudly about his wedding that people sixteen miles away could probably hear him, he was unlikely to notice.  
  
Potter was speaking with a witch in loud purple robes whom Draco recognized as Allison Hartley, a senior member of the Wizengamot. He was smiling, feigning interest with skill in a discussion that was unlikely to be about either Quidditch or himself; Hartley had been notorious among Draco’s circles before he left for turning conversations to her own achievements, and five years would not have changed her. Hartley was also prickly, quick to catch her audience yawning or sighing.  
  
But Potter had her _laughing_. And he made contributions of his own, in a quick, light voice that caused Draco to lean slightly forwards to catch the words before he caught himself.  
  
Potter wore emerald-bright green robes. The man Draco had known five years ago wouldn’t have been caught dead in such a Slytherin color, no matter how well it complemented his eyes. There was silver embroidery on the cuffs and hems, forming lilies. Draco hummed under his breath. A tasteful, understated way of honoring his Muggleborn mother without distressing the pure-bloods who dominated these functions.  
  
Hartley put a companionable arm around Potter’s shoulders and squeaked something up at him. Potter laughed aloud and moved slightly to the side.  
  
Draco clenched his jaw to keep it from dropping open. He’d assumed it was an illusion created by distance and angle that rendered Potter’s dark hair a tame mass of curls. It wasn’t. Somehow, he contrived to retain a bit of messiness on the _right_ side of the equation. Draco’s fingers twitched on the wineglass. He could imagine wanting to run his fingers through that hair, which was not an impulse that would ever have occurred to him—before.  
  
 _Potter isn’t the only one who changed while I was abroad._  
  
Potter and Hartley moved on. Draco observed with an expert eye as Potter escorted her to a table and pulled her chair out for her, and could detect no trace of the nervousness or unfamiliarity that often ruined those chivalrous gestures.  
  
Draco sipped thoughtfully one more time at his wine, and watched out of the corner of his eye as the food arrived. Potter handled his forks properly. He never took more of any food than was decent; his bread had barely enough butter to cover two corners. He didn’t drip the sauce that covered the fish down his front or commit any other embarrassing mistake. All the time, he attended to the conversation with Hartley, murmuring sympathetically when she sniffled overdramatically. He even managed to pat her hand and not make it look condescending.  
  
“Are you listening to me?”  
  
Thank God, Blaise had finally interrupted his own monologue about his wedding. Draco turned to him and smiled. “Not really,” he admitted. He could say that kind of thing, since he and Blaise had been friends for years. He laid his own cutlery down neatly, in precisely the right place. He had eaten without a hitch and paid attention to Potter at the same time, of course. “I was more interested in Potter.”  
  
“Oh, yes, the Ministry’s Golden Boy.” Blaise sounded amused rather than angry, which was another point in Potter’s favor. To have made peace with someone who’d been in Slytherin in Hogwarts—real peace, not grudging tolerance—would have taken no small amount of diplomacy and patience. “I’m not surprised. He’s practically the reason that Muggleborns and pure-bloods agree to be in the same room together.”  
  
Draco picked up his wine delicately and took a sip. He couldn’t help it that mention of political prowess aroused him, and that arousal dried his throat.  
  
Nor could he help it that Blaise knew him well enough to understand the sip of wine perfectly and watch him with a bright grin. Draco leaned across the table. “How did he manage this transformation?”  
  
“He wanted to serve the Ministry, but he couldn’t be a field Auror.” Blaise snorted, but covered the snort with a napkin, so that Draco didn’t have to be ashamed of him. “That’s not a surprise, of course, given how many people would love to claim the credit for killing him. So Shacklebolt groomed him to become the Ministry’s public face. Sometimes literally. I don’t think there’s a party in the last five years he hasn’t attended, unless it conflicted with another and more important party. He’s always at official functions like this.”  
  
“It’s amazing,” Draco murmured, watching Potter from the corner of his eye again as he stood up to dance with Hartley. He had to guide her among numerous small round tables to reach the dancing floor, and he did it without a single stumble. It was no wonder Hartley beamed up at him with adoration. “I didn’t think he had the potential for such a transformation.”  
  
“Quite a difference from your last lover, isn’t it?” Blaise asked, with a wicked little twist to the final words.  
  
Draco cast him a furious glance, and Blaise laughed at him. “It’s not my fault that you fell for Paul, Draco.”  
  
Draco gritted his teeth against the reminder of Paul. Draco had thought love would make a difference, that if he was willing to move to the States for Paul and start a new life there, surely he would be able to put up with the man’s slovenliness and poor manners and constant disparagement of everything British, from Draco’s accent to his family background to the British wizarding education system.  
  
Love hadn’t been enough.  
  
But it was a pleasure to watch Potter, who indeed couldn’t have been a greater contrast to Draco’s memories. He whirled Hartley around the dance floor with a grace absolutely incredible for the awkward boy who’d stumbled his way through the Yule Ball in fourth year. And he smiled as if he was enjoying it—or in a way that would convince anyone he was. Draco scrutinized him carefully, and could detect no break in the mask. Yes, he was someone the gullible Muggleborns would enjoy talking to and the political pure-bloods would appreciate for the apparent effortlessness of his effort.  
  
“I’m going to talk to him,” he said quietly to Blaise. “Introduce me, would you?”  
  
Blaise gave him a devil’s grin and leaned back in his seat. Draco narrowed his eyes. It was becoming perfectly obvious that his wife, Astoria Greengrass, was a bad influence on Blaise. He never used to go out of his way to confound Draco before this.  
  
“You’ve known each other most of your lives by now,” Blaise said. “Why do you need an introduction?”  
  
Draco closed his eyes as he forced his churning feelings back into stillness. Yes, Blaise was technically right; Potter wasn’t a stranger to Draco, or at least no more a stranger than anyone else was, after Draco’s five years in America. But it would be impolite to simply walk up and claim Potter’s attention after so long apart, particularly with the history between them. Draco would have preferred the buffer of someone Potter must have dealt with fairly often at official functions like this. Blaise worked in the Ministry’s finance department.  
  
Then Draco opened his eyes and watched Potter whirling out the final measures of the dance, finishing by bowing to Hartley. Hartley bobbed a curtsey back, and _she_ looked ridiculous. Potter manifestly did not. Draco’s stomach tightened with longing to be with someone like that, someone who embodied grace and calmness and so many of the aesthetic virtues he’d learned to appreciate when he was a child.  
  
“You’re right,” he told Blaise, and rose to his feet and glided across the room before Blaise could do more than gape at him.  
  
Potter sensed him coming and turned to face him. Draco wondered for a moment if that was due to instincts honed in the war or what must have been his truly intense interpersonal coaching.  
  
For a gratifying moment, Potter’s eyebrows curled upwards, and the polite smile that crossed his lips looked strained. But he gave a correct half-bow to Draco, as someone he knew slightly, and held out his hand for Draco to shake without any hesitation. “Malfoy,” he said.  
  
Draco smiled and shook his hand. Potter had a firm grip, one that would impress without injuring. He held himself straighter than Draco had realized from a distance, and his gaze was direct but not cutting. Someone had finally convinced him to shrink his glasses, if not lose them altogether. The effect made his striking eyes more striking still, and Draco didn’t lick his lips only because of his _own_ iron training.  
  
“Excuse me for cutting in,” he said, with an apologetic glance to Hartley. “But Potter and I are old schoolmates, and I haven’t seen him for several years. If you’ll excuse us?” He gave a small bow of his own to Hartley.  
  
She narrowed her eyes as if she suspected him of something, but waved a gracious hand. Draco walked over to the sideboard of desserts in the corner with Potter, the anticipation of the coming conversation a warm glow in his groin.  
  
*  
  
Harry checked a sigh expertly. He’d long since learned how to make sarcastic comments in his mind, rather than aloud. It afforded him nearly the same amount of satisfaction that speaking them would have, and kept him rather more friends and political contacts.  
  
He didn’t like these evenings, but he tolerated them. At least he knew he was making a valuable contribution to healing the wounds the war had left. He’d also learned things that everyone doubted he could, and he took as much pleasure as ever in proving his critics wrong, including all the critics who had thought he would cease to matter once he’d defeated Voldemort.  
  
But he rarely ran into people he’d _hated_ at these parties. Being asked to entertain Malfoy was like being asked to entertain Umbridge.  
  
 _Or worse, since I successfully flattered her at the Maggiores’ wedding last year._  
  
Still, as he took up a single small square of chocolate and folded the napkin into sharp-edged triangles beneath it, Harry knew he would confound Malfoy as easily as he did all the others who wanted to rip into him. Malfoy could hardly hex him without causing a public disturbance, and Harry could handle any words he spoke.  
  
“I do admire the way you’ve changed your image, Potter,” Malfoy said, and regarded him with shining eyes that proved him one of the best actors Harry had ever seen. “How long did it take?”  
  
Harry studied Malfoy’s stance—casual on the surface, tense beneath it, especially the way his fingers curled around his own napkin—and the set of his jaw, and chose the combination of flattery and humility that usually eased his interactions with the proudest blood purists. “Months, of course,” he said, with a modest little shrug and a lowering of his eyes. “I hadn’t considered how old the traditions were, or how thoroughly I’d grown up outside them. Life in a small Muggle family doesn’t teach you anything about large parties.”  
  
Malfoy’s jaw relaxed, and he leaned closer. Harry blinked. _He got my pun? More, he appreciated it?_  
  
“I did think the hair must have taken the most work,” Malfoy murmured. “I can remember it whipping around your head when you pursued the Snitch. I thought an army of house-elves with rose-scented shampoo couldn’t have settled it.” He paused delicately. “Of course, the more important question is why you agreed to go along with the Ministry and their demands at all. What happened to that independent spirit I remember so well?”  
  
 _More than slightly sarcastic. But he_ looks _like he’s teasing_. Harry shook off his bewilderment. He’d dealt with people like this, too, including some who changed moods faster than Malfoy and used words considerably less polite.  
  
“Independence has to yield to the good of society,” Harry said. “Independence in beliefs of all kinds, if those beliefs don’t prove to offer some wider benefit to the community.” He’d meant that as a hidden rebuke for the Malfoys’ support of Voldemort, but Malfoy simply let his smile widen a touch in appreciation. Baffled, Harry returned to the empty rhetoric. “Minister Shacklebolt convinced me of that. I couldn’t serve the wizarding community in the way I most wanted, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t serve at all.”  
  
“And service is enough?” Malfoy cocked his head thoughtfully to the side. “I had you pegged as a ruler, not a servant.”  
  
Harry laughed. It took more effort than usual to make his laughter the gentle, amusing kind that people would expect to hear at a party, instead of the wild bitterness he wanted to give voice to. “You aren’t the only one to make that mistake.” He wondered for a moment if he should say that last word, then dismissed the worry. Malfoy wasn’t in a politically important position, and he was unlikely to talk to Harry again for any reason other than mere curiosity. “No. I’m quite content with the position of a humble servant.” He stressed the first word in the last phrase, and let Malfoy make what he would of it.  
  
Malfoy only went on smiling. Harry wondered absently, as he took a tiny bite of chocolate, whether his years abroad had induced some sort of brain damage. “You perform it too well for the Ministry not to know your value.”  
  
 _Ah_. Harry understood this, too, this implication that he must receive substantial rewards from the Ministry for performing like a dancing bear in public, and he could deal with it. He put on his most helpful expression and reached for his robe pocket. “I’m carrying a report on my earnings for the year,” he said. “The Minister just gave it to me. Would you like to examine it? They judge my value very accurately in Galleons.”  
  
He watched Malfoy with eyes in which, he knew, the glee was well-hidden. The offer always put the doubters in an awkward position. Either they examined the paper and showed their vulgar curiosity, or they refused and made themselves look like fools for doubting him in the first place.  
  
But Malfoy reached out a calm hand, not an eager one, and read it at a leisurely pace, as if he were admiring the shapes of the letters. Then he smiled and handed the paper back.  
  
“A nice ploy,” he said. “But that’s been folded too many times for me to believe you only received it today.”  
  
Harry stiffened before he could stop himself. Then he accepted the paper with an easy, loose hand, tucked it back into his robe pocket, and opened his mouth to make a suitably aloof guess as to how many people Malfoy would spread that information to.  
  
Malfoy stepped closer, however, his hand angled out to brush Harry’s wrist. The sensation of his long fingers unexpectedly burned, as if he’d cast a Warming Charm on his skin. Harry blinked and noted the trick in silence to himself. There were a few people he’d like to startle that way.  
  
Meanwhile, it had worked on him, and Malfoy whispered into his ear, “What they pay you is too low for someone as accomplished and beautiful as you are.”  
  
He moved away in the next moment, and left Harry blinking stupidly. Malfoy watched him with a faint smile that only deepened when Harry banished the telltale surprise and manufactured a fake smile of his own for anyone watching who was curious about the “secret” Malfoy had whispered to him. It was as though Malfoy rejoiced in the way Harry acted in public, which made no sense. Harry had expected scorn for trying to “parody” pure-bloods, particularly given that he’d admitted it took months of training for him to achieve this much.  
  
“Open compliments?” Harry raised a doubtful eyebrow. “I’d thought that forbidden by the 1871 Treaty of Vienna.” He’d managed to fool more than one of the especially stupid pure-bloods with that line in his time, including Hartley. It was at least an acceptable comeback for Malfoy, who deserved nothing deeper or more original.  
  
Malfoy smiled again and touched Harry’s wrist where it passed under the napkin and was therefore hidden from the view of anyone critically watching, unless the person stood directly behind Harry’s shoulder. “Yes,” Malfoy murmured, “but the 1872 Treaty granted special exceptions for those who’ve climbed to heights of beauty and achievement with disadvantages dragging them down.”  
  
“Disadvantages,” Harry said, through a polite smile that would have fooled people three paces away from him, but was unlikely to fool Malfoy.  
  
“Yes,” Malfoy said. “Unless you care to take back your own evidence about your hair taking months to tame?” He offered Harry a bland smile and waited, his head tilted to the side and his eyes shining.  
  
 _I can’t understand his game. What does he want from me_? But Harry’s etiquette instructors had taught him how to play for time when he was confused, and so he could gracefully incline his head back and murmur, “Of course not. I try to avoid outright lies. So time-consuming when other people figure out the truth. I’ve never had a good memory.”  
  
“Then I am even more impressed,” Malfoy said, and his fingers brushed Harry’s wrist under the napkin again. “I myself could not talk to Allison Hartley without lies.”  
  
Harry controlled himself on the verge of taking a step backwards. _What is this? Malfoys don’t admit incapacity. I ought to know_. One of his first tests had been to visit Lucius Malfoy, who was no longer under house arrest but had become a stubborn recluse, and convince him to attend some of the Ministry galas. Lucius was becoming deaf, but refused to admit it. Harry had used most of the techniques he’d learned in that unnerving half-hour to accommodate Lucius, persuade him, and give the impression that he never noticed his hesitations in answering questions.  
  
“Talking to members of the Wizengamot is something of a specialty of mine,” Harry said, to win some of his own back.  
  
Malfoy’s face went pale around the creases of his eyes. Harry smiled blandly, and let the memory of his testimony before the Wizengamot that had cleared the Malfoys from heavy fines or terms in Azkaban crackle between them for a moment.  
  
 _He’ll hurry away now. Malfoys don’t like people who embarrass them, either_. The hardest part of his entire interview with Lucius had been convincing him not to punish a house-elf who’d startled him by coming up on his deafer side with food.  
  
But the pallor vanished in the next moment, and Malfoy slid a stop closer, his eyes very wide. Harry wondered if that was supposed to contribute to an innocent appearance. Since he would never be less than suspicious of Malfoy, it seemed like effort wasted. “Which refutes your claim of having a bad memory,” he said. “I wonder, do you remember me so clearly that you would refuse a date with me?”  
  
Harry actually gaped for a moment, and Malfoy’s nostrils flared, as if he were sniffing a pleasant scent. Harry recovered rapidly, but he rather hoped Kingsley hadn’t been watching. He would demand to know what Malfoy had said to cause such a reaction, and be disappointed when Harry admitted that it was nothing more than a proposal he’d received a hundred times.  
  
 _On the other hand, at least flirtation would explain the odd things he’s said to me._  
  
“I remember your propensity for tricks that didn’t quite work,” Harry said, in a low voice that he nevertheless meant to be sharp enough to cut letters on glass. “I see no reason I should _help_ set one up.”  
  
Malfoy winced a little, and gazed straight at him with eyes of a marvelously clear grey. As Harry’s brain reeled around his astonishment that he’d applied the word “marvelous” to Malfoy, the other man said, “Yes. I understand. Then I can only apologize, and offer my hopes that I will be more welcome on another evening.”  
  
He bowed and let his eyes linger on Harry’s face for one moment more. “The hair is not the only thing you worked on,” he said, so quietly Harry knew no one else could hear, “and not the only thing you should earn praise for.”  
  
And he moved away. Harry deliberately didn’t allow his gaze to follow him. Instead, he turned to greet Pandora Nelson, a politically powerful witch in the importation of Potions ingredients, whom he’d seen hovering in the background from the corner of his eye five minutes ago.  
  
But long after the party, when he’d thrown off the elaborate robes they made him wear at functions like this and settled down in his favorite ragged chair with a glass of butterbeer, he was still replaying the conversation with Malfoy in his mind.  
  
*  
  
“It doesn’t look as though your efforts were exactly crowned with success,” Blaise said dryly as Draco slid back into his seat beside him. “Potter’s already talking to Nelson now.” Though Draco didn’t know exactly who Nelson was, he knew from Blaise’s unimpressed tone that he or she was no one who should have been able to take Draco’s place.  
  
Draco took up his unfinished glass of wine and had a few more sips. “That’s where you would be wrong,” he said. “I caught his interest, took him off-guard, and made him notice me. That’s the first step. I imagine that Potter has plenty of people competing for his attention.”  
  
“Dozens,” said Blaise, blinking like a lizard. Draco hid his glee. That was an extremely good sign that Blaise’s brain was whirling on the inside. “But—they all want something from him, Draco. He’s used to that. He won’t be inclined to pick you out of the bunch just because you said a few pretty words to him.”  
  
“Ah.” Draco glanced casually over his shoulder and saw Potter making himself agreeable to a squat witch with long silvery hair. He recognized her now: Pandora Nelson, someone who knew more about potions than Potter should be able to learn if he lived four centuries. And yet, she was smiling and listening intently to Potter in the same way Hartley had. Draco again needed wine to moisten his throat. “But I don’t have any obvious motive. The others want him to introduce them to people, or to throw his support behind their causes, or to give them invitations. He thought I’d come to make fun of him. When I asked him on a date instead, he was utterly astounded.”  
  
“That doesn’t mean he’ll believe you.” Blaise was already recovered enough to pick at a remnant of his dinner.  
  
“Of course not,” Draco said. “But he’ll think about me. And I’ll have more time to prove that I want him for himself. I should think that would be irresistible to someone like Potter.”  
  
“What happens when he figures out that you want him so you can get back into society?” Blaise asked skeptically.  
  
Draco shot a swift glance at his friend. “But I _don’t_ want him for that. I want him because he’s beautiful, and he has beautiful manners, and he’s intelligent enough to keep up with me in conversation.”  
  
“Right,” Blaise said, stretching the word like taffy.  
  
“I do,” Draco said. “Potter’s the butterfly who’s finally emerged from his cocoon, Blaise, and I’m the one who’s going to net him.”  
  
He thought again over the conversation, the way Potter understood his words _and_ their implications, the way he moved, how he timed and tuned his phrases, and the hawk-like way he watched for emotional reactions. All traits Draco admired, and combined with those looks and the fascination Potter had always exerted on him…  
  
He could picture Potter in the sumptuous flat he probably lived in now, later that night, trying and failing to get his expensive wine to give him the answers to the puzzle that was Draco.  
  
 _And if I don’t manage to snare him after all, I will surely have fun trying._


	2. Chapter 2

  
“And if the Cannons win tomorrow,” Ron said, pointing an unsteady finger at Harry, “ _then_ you have to get up on the table in nothing but those poncey green pants that I _know_ you have, and dance a jig.”  
  
“All right,” Harry agreed, grinning both because he knew it would never happen and because he could just imagine what all his high-society contacts would make of him if they saw him honoring that bet. He tilted back his head and let the butterbeer run down his throat. Pleasant as it was when he drank it at home after all those posh wines with names he couldn’t even pronounce—well, he knew how to pronounce them now, he just didn’t care—it couldn’t compare to a drink in the company of his mates.  
  
“Harry, I want to know something.” Dean leaned forwards over the table, his forehead wrinkled as if he were contemplating the purpose of the universe. “How in the world did you end up _owning_ poncey green pants? Why did you let the Ministry groom you the way they did? It’s like you’re some fine racehorse in their stables.”  
  
“Worse than that,” Harry muttered. “A racehorse is at least allowed to get sweaty every once in a while.” He felt Ron clap him on the back, and smiled at him. His training wasn’t a complete loss of time if it made him able to tell better jokes, Harry thought.  
  
“But _why_?” Dean persisted.  
  
Harry leaned back in his chair, staring thoughtfully at Dean. It was a long time since he’d felt comfortable enough to join Harry, Ron, and the rest of them at the Dog and Horn; he’d married Ginny after a whirlwind courtship and seemed to think that Harry blamed him for that. Harry didn’t, but, on the other hand, he wasn’t about to encourage Dean to come and talk to him if it would only distress him.  
  
Now, though, the easy slouch of Dean’s body and that wrinkle in his forehead indicated he was deep in the perplexed philosophy of drunkenness, and Harry’s former romance with Ginny was the furthest thing from his mind.  
  
 _Stop noticing his posture_ , Harry scolded himself. _Your obligation to the Ministry ends at the front doors of the pure-bloods. You don’t_ have _to keep noticing people and acting intelligent when you’re out with your mates_. He leaned forwards and said seriously, “Well, you see, they pay me quite a lot of money.”  
  
Ron laughed, incidentally scattering bubbles across the table. Harry muttered a wandless Cleaning Charm; that was one he’d become very good at in the past five years.  
  
“But it has to be something more than that,” Dean said, with all the stubbornness of someone ramming his head into a stone wall and expecting the wall to crumble. “After all, you could do other things, even if you can’t be an Auror. Why change yourself around to suit the Ministry?”  
  
Harry sighed. There was no way to explain his job without sounding pretentious. He just hoped that Dean would be able to forgive him that. Harry sometimes found it difficult to forgive himself that.  
  
“Because I want to keep the wizarding world from going to war again,” he said quietly. Ron turned and looked at him in concern. Harry caught his eye and shook his head with a small, wry smile. _I’m all right_. “What good is saving it from Voldemort, if people just turn around and destroy it on their own?”  
  
“But people wouldn’t do that,” Dean said, sounding more confident now. “They know how bad the last war was. They wouldn’t…” He trailed off, probably because Harry couldn’t keep a cynical smile from slipping across his face.  
  
“There are still stubborn pure-bloods who think people like you and me are shite,” Harry said. “Except that they can’t say that to our faces, given the political temper of the times. And there are Muggleborns who think all the pure-bloods should be eliminated, because that way there couldn’t be another war based on blood purity.”  
  
“That’s ridiculous,” Dean said flatly.  
  
“I know that,” Harry said. He took another drink of butterbeer, relishing the way it buzzed in his throat. He would need to go to another party tomorrow night, one he was emphatically not looking forwards to, which made the bubbling sensation all the more precious. “But people think a good deal of ridiculous rubbish. If I can go around and talk to individual pure-bloods and Muggleborns, people with enough money and influence to get others thinking the way they do, and persuade them back to a path of calm reason instead, then the sacrifice of flattening my hair and so on is worth it.”  
  
Dean was quiet for long moments. Then he shook his head. “But wouldn’t your natural image work just as well? After all, the pure-bloods must know that this isn’t the real you, and they’d be more likely to distrust you.”  
  
Harry snorted in genuine amusement. “I can see that you haven’t met many pure-bloods devoted to the maintaining of their traditions,” he said. “There’s no one blinder or more culturally proud on this green earth. They think that, if I adopt some of their ways of dressing and eating and being, it must be because I _admire_ them. Even the ones who suspect or know it’s an act admire the act itself, because that’s the kind of mental labyrinth they trap themselves in.”  
  
“That’s why we need to be here,” Ron said, and flung an arm around his neck. “To remind Harry of what real life is like.” Solemnly, he tipped most of his butterbeer down Harry’s back.  
  
Harry punched him in the neck, and then they were down and scrabbling under the table, Harry laughing and Ron cursing while Dean and the rest cheered them on.  
  
 _This is the real me_ , Harry thought, as he crawled out from under the table and brushed dust and foam from his hair. _And wouldn’t people like Malfoy shriek and faint if they saw?_   
  
At least he knew he had an easy escape from polite society if it ever became absolutely intolerable: reveal who he really was, and watch them back away.  
  
*  
  
“And you’re sure that Potter will be here?”  
  
Astoria turned and looked at him tolerantly. Draco smoothed a hand down his chest in consequence and gave her a faint smile. “I sound like a begging child, don’t I?” he asked.  
  
“I wouldn’t say that, having no experience with children at the moment,” Astoria murmured, and stepped skillfully around one of the tiny tables that had been sat up to contain food, games, and conversation pieces for her guests. The house-elves were still arranging several near the outer edge of the sunburst pattern. Astoria surveyed them for a moment, then tapped one elf’s shoulder and made her move a table. Ignoring the elf’s attempts to punish herself and obey at the same time, Astoria turned back to Draco. “More like the squalling Kneazle kitten that my sister owned.”  
  
Draco sketched a small bow in acknowledgment and sat down on a chair behind him. Astoria was going to feel amusement at him no matter what happened and she was an acquaintance of the inner circle, being his best friend’s wife, so he resigned himself to being that object of amusement. “I can’t believe that someone hasn’t captured Potter yet.”  
  
“Oh, plenty of people have tried.” Astoria moved several steps backwards and then ran a hand through her blonde hair, trying out several different styles at the same moment as she considered the wizarding chess pieces on the nearest table. Draco gazed at her in admiration. Had he ever taken a wife, he would have wanted one like her. “But Potter smiles at them, and dances with them, and flirts, and promises nothing.”  
  
“Yes, I had that impression.” Draco thought of the way he had tried to impress and corner Potter at the Ministry function, and the way Potter had slipped out of all the traps while scarcely seeming to notice them. “Is there _anything_ that seems to attract his attention or hold it?”  
  
Astoria glanced archly at him. “Are you asking me to help you with your flirtation?” She left the rest of the words unsaid: that that would amount to admitting Draco’s own qualities were insufficient to attract Potter’s attention.  
  
“Of course not,” Draco said, and smiled at her in a way that she would be unable to see emotion in. “Only wondering what the competition had done in the past.”  
  
Astoria laughed softly. Even her laughter was polished to the point of shining. Draco had to wonder how Blaise, who had his moments of crudity, had managed to capture her. Doubtless the answer was buried somewhere in the monologue that Blaise had favored him with at the Ministry party. “There’s been little competition. Potter hasn’t dated anyone, so far as I’ve heard, since he became the Ministry’s little boy-toy.”  
  
Draco smiled at her more broadly. “But, of course, what you’ve heard is not all you know.”  
  
Astoria twisted her head to the side and peered at him from beneath golden eyelashes. “Well. That would be telling, wouldn’t it?”  
  
“Imagine,” Draco said, rising to his feet and stepping up so that he could trail his fingers across her elbow, “what entertainment we could provide for you if you let me know a little more about Potter. The irresistible force against the immovable object. I leave it up to you to choose who would have what part in this little drama,” he added generously.  
  
Astoria laughed. “I do think that, if he was going to choose someone from the upper ranks of society, he would choose someone like you. Cleverness holds his attention, and makes his duties less wearisome for him.”  
  
“Someone from the upper ranks of society,” Draco said slowly, and leaned his elbow on a chair and gave her a hard stare as invitation to go on.  
  
Luckily, Astoria was not someone who played with a serious flirtation. She gave him an open glance and said, “Yes. For a time, he was dating Ginny Weasley, or at least that was the rumor. They separated quite some time back, of course. She’s married to some Mudblood or other these days. I think he’s an artist. And there have been rumors of other lovers. Always among people that he would be ashamed to introduce to _us_.”  
  
Draco frowned. “I could have sworn that he was perfectly adapted to our way of life. Why would he want to sully himself with someone beneath him?”  
  
“He’s adopted our manners,” said Astoria, “and he’s perfect at them, he really is. A pleasure to have at any party, including this one.” She got a little self-satisfied smile on her face that Blaise also had when he mentioned this particular party, which was to celebrate their marriage anniversary. Draco rolled his eyes slightly. “But I don’t think he’s let our standards into his brain and heart. He works for _goals_. The beauty and the regularity of our traditions isn’t a goal in and of itself.”  
  
Draco shut his eyes and let a single sweet shiver slide through him.  
  
“What was that about?” Astoria asked, thus proving how comfortable she was with him; she could admit that she hadn’t understood his body language at one glance. “You looked the way Blaise does when he realizes that someone’s left a loophole in their appropriations report.”  
  
Draco opened his eyes and gave her his most dazzling smile. “Seat us together for dinner at this party,” he said. “You won’t regret it.”  
  
“I would if you disrupted the festivities in any way, such as by reminding Potter of the tension between you at school.” Astoria’s voice was mild, but her eyes were like green steel. Draco’s mother couldn’t have threatened him more effectively—and hadn’t when she quizzed him about Paul at dinner last night.  
  
“Of course not,” Draco said. “I’m simply going to show Potter the attraction of falling into compliance with our standards after all, and choosing a truly _elegant_ lover.”  
  
He didn’t say the rest, knowing Astoria would be able to sense it without his speaking: that there was a deep attraction in capturing the attention of someone who had reasons to shy away from him, and even more in doing what no other pure-blood had managed to do and making Potter’s inner world as well as his outer appearance conform to their aesthetic standards.  
  
“You and a thousand others,” Astoria said, but her eyes were gently sharp again. “You forget how many people have had reasons to court him, Draco.”  
  
“But I do not think that many other people _want_ him quite as badly as I do, simply for himself,” Draco said, and captured and kissed her hand before she could withdraw it. “And I am not without charms of my own that can give him beauty in return for beauty.”  
  
Astoria’s raised eyebrow implied whole silent worlds of doubt. Draco stood with a laugh and squeezed her shoulder. “Seat us together at dinner. You’ll have plenty of entertainment.”  
  
“And if I choose not to?” Astoria tilted her head haughtily.  
  
Draco bowed. “Then I must resign myself to the wishes of the hostess, of course—who will not be able to see some of my more daring moves in this chess game.”  
  
Astoria looked at him thoughtfully, then moved away. Draco watched as she plucked his card from the table next to Blaise and switched it with that of the Wizengamot member who had been seated opposite Potter, and felt equal measures of deep relaxation and eager anticipation surge through him.  
  
 _Oh, Potter. You won’t be watching for_ sincere _compliments, which means I can take you on your blind side._  
  
*  
  
“Hullo, Potter. Fancy meeting you here.”  
  
Harry offered one of his expert smiles back to Malfoy and sat down on the other side of the table from him, draping his napkin across his lap. “It is indeed a surprise,” he said, though of course it wasn’t. He had known that Zabini and Malfoy were friends in school, and it made sense that he should expect to see Malfoy here. Nor was it coincidence that they were across from each other, or isolated at a tiny table. If Malfoy thought that Harry would allow that to disconcert him, however, he should think again. “I reckon that you haven’t been back in England long enough for us to meet twice by sheer chance.” He picked up his glass of wine, sipped at it, and then looked inquiringly at Malfoy.  
  
Malfoy blinked once, then recovered and leaned across the table as if he would brush Harry’s wrist with his fingers again. Harry coincidentally moved his hand away so that he could balance the plate of venison being handed to him, murmuring thanks to the server. She blushed prettily. Harry approved. Sometimes it was good to be reminded that not every single action in pure-blood society was the product of forethought and careful maneuvering.  
  
 _Just most of them._  
  
“Not long enough for that,” Malfoy murmured as he cut apart his own venison. He watched Harry’s fork with narrowed eyes. Harry used it perfectly to spite him. For some reason, Malfoy smiled. “But long enough for me to have lost my head quite hopelessly to your charms.” He looked up into Harry’s face.   
  
Harry solemnly lifted an invisible head on his fork and knife to hand back to Malfoy. “Here it is again. What use would I have for it?”  
  
“My hostess tells me that you’ve received more than your fair share of compliments,” Malfoy said. His voice was low, unaffected by Harry’s gesture, but a faint flush touched his cheeks. Harry noticed it with satisfaction. “One would think you would be more gracious about accepting them.”  
  
Harry gave Malfoy a half-bow. “My natural modesty means I grow anxious about the ‘more than my fair share’ part,” he said. “Surely you should have some. Do you want me to conjure a mirror so that you can begin addressing the deficit?” He lifted his wand politely.  
  
Malfoy closed his eyes and took a long breath. Harry seized the opportunity to take a few bites. If Malfoy was this much of a talker throughout the meal, Harry wouldn’t get a chance to eat, and fainting from hunger was embarrassing.  
  
“Your beauty is unrivaled in this room,” Malfoy said at last, opening his eyes. “You have _perfect_ manners; I haven’t seen you make a mistake yet.” Harry looked thoughtfully at him and considered making one, if it would deflect Malfoy’s absurd interest in him, but no, this was too public a place and would entail too much of a sacrifice of his reputation. “You parry my words well. Have you considered for a moment that my yearning for you might be genuine?”  
  
“Of course not,” Harry said. “We’re all practiced in games, aren’t we? And what could be a better game than convincing me that you mean something you don’t?” He took another bite and smiled blandly at Malfoy, automatically keeping his lips shut so that he wouldn’t show any food stuck between his teeth, despite the temptation to frighten Malfoy. “It’s too bad for you that I’ve played this game too many times to enjoy being either loser or victor.”  
  
*  
  
 _Damn. Of course_. Draco could not believe that he’d failed to make the connection in his own mind. He’d assumed that, since Potter appeared to reject pure-blood values even as he aped them, he would appreciate genuine compliments and be drawn to Draco because of them.  
  
He’d forgotten that Potter was practiced enough in those values to assume that any apparently genuine compliment was a ploy to win something else from him. He had no reason to differentiate Draco’s words from any of the others he received.  
  
 _And he doesn’t appreciate the acting for itself, either, as a performance or an art. This could be problematic._   
  
But Potter finished his latest bite and looked straight at him, green eyes bright and challenging, and Draco realized that he didn’t care. He’d never been so drawn to anyone. He wanted Potter, and he could climb over problems in the way. Yes, Potter had met plenty of people who wanted to flirt with him, but none with the real motivation Draco had. And that real motivation remained in spite of all the doubts Potter had. He could not _actually_ reach into Draco’s skull and change Draco’s mind.  
  
Draco relaxed and smiled at Potter, and he raised an eyebrow back. “Have you reclaimed your head?” he asked politely.  
  
“I’m going to take a risk,” Draco said. “I’m going to tell you why I left England and what I’ve been doing for the last five years. Then you might understand what the sight of you means to me.”  
  
Potter tapped his glasses. “I’ve never been that accomplished at seeing through someone else’s eyes. Myopia and all that.”  
  
Draco surprised himself by reaching across the table and grabbing Potter’s wrist. “Listen to me,” he said. “And don’t make judgments until you’ve heard all I have to say. Please.”  
  
Potter let his eyes travel slowly from Draco’s gripping fingers up to his face. Draco flinched, feeling properly scathed, but didn’t let him go. In fact, he rubbed his fingers in place and saw Potter flush a bit in response.  
  
Abruptly, Potter relaxed and gave Draco a small smile. “It’s been a while since anyone used a tactic like that to gain my attention,” he said. He tugged gently at the wrist Draco still held prisoner. “All right. Talk.”  
  
“I do like touching you, you know,” Draco whispered back, but released him, because he could already feel curious eyes on their table. He sat back, picked up his fork, ate a few bites, and considered. Potter sat calmly across the table from him, his eyes fixed on Draco’s face with gratifying attention.  
  
“I met Paul when he came to England to attend a Potioneers’ Convention,” Draco began. “I found him charming, open in a way that no one I knew at the time was, and interestingly brilliant on the subject of potions.” He cocked his head at Potter. “If I had known you at the time, I wouldn’t have been so tempted.”  
  
Potter gave him an elusive smile. “Paul—was his last name Breaker, by any chance? The one who first used dandelion fluff as the cure delivery in Burn-Relieving Potion?”  
  
Draco caught his breath. Here was his first proof that Potter was actually knowledgeable on the subjects he talked to other guests about, not simply skilled at making them laugh. “That’s the one,” he said.  
  
Potter’s smile grew a bit brighter. “I don’t blame you for being interested in him. What I could understand of his technical papers proves that he’s both original _and_ creative. I’ve noticed a lot of Potions brewers are only one or the other.”  
  
Draco blinked. The distinction between originality and creativity was one that Professor Snape had made, and no one else since. And he had done it only in private sessions with Draco when he was showing him techniques and tactics that he would never get a chance to teach in class—hardly a time or place that Potter could have spied them out.  
  
“He was that,” he said. “Alas, he was also creative with insults.”  
  
“Why?” Potter’s eyes widened with what looked like honest interest. “If you were willing to leave your own country to live with him, that argues that your interest should be repaid with interest.” He allowed Draco a moment to enjoy the mild pun before he continued, gently but persistently. “What did he have to insult you about?”  
  
“My heritage,” Draco said. “My accent. Everything that was British. He claimed to love it when we were in this country, and the moment he had me trapped in the States, he started heaping rubbish on me.” He was quiet a moment, remembering the way Paul used to sneer when he’d successfully landed another blow on Draco’s pride.  
  
Potter reached across the table and touched his elbow. Like the pat that Draco had seen him give to Hartley two days ago, this was not condescending. Draco remembered the cruel meanings that Paul could instill into the slightest gesture, and decided that Potter was Paul’s opposite in more ways than one.  
  
“I can’t imagine that you’re a man to take that for long,” said Potter, in just the warm, comforting tone Draco had wished somebody would talk to him in when his relations with Paul were at their worst. “What kept you there?”  
  
“Because I’d already invested so much effort in moving,” Draco said. “I also had a futile hope that he’d change if I remained with him long enough, and he could see how much I loved him. Most foolish of all, I couldn’t bear to admit that I’d been wrong, the way I’d have to if I went back home. It was rather a whirlwind affair; he was here for two weeks for the Potioneers’ Convention, and then he stayed another month or so to get to know me. Several of my friends said I was mad when I followed him home. I didn’t want to prove them right.”  
  
“How well I understand that impulse,” Potter said with a rueful smile. “It ruins some of our best actions.” He reached out and grasped his glass to take a sip of wine without removing his eyes from Draco’s face. “What made you finally change your mind?”  
  
“Little by little, the evidence piled up,” Draco said. “When I finally asked whether Paul loved me, he laughed and told me that of course he didn’t, but he didn’t mind me and I was convenient.”  
  
He closed his eyes. He could still see Paul’s face, alight with mischievous mirth. His voice was full of scorn as he said, “You’re a good fuck, Draco. You do your part like a good little housewife to clean up the place. Why should I complain?”  
  
Draco had stood there and seen five years of his assumptions clatter to pieces around his feet.  
  
 _Such a waste. Such a bloody, fucking waste of time when I could have been doing so many other things instead._   
  
He didn’t think he could bring himself to tell Potter that. But, under the influence of a compassionate gaze and an intense, listening silence, he told him something like it, in halting words. Potter never encouraged him to hurry. He never, as his parents had done, puckered his lips in disapproval that something so common and nonsensical had taken in a Malfoy. He nodded in the appropriate places, hummed sympathetically, and asked appropriate questions.  
  
Draco took a deep breath at the end of it and blinked at his mostly full plate. He didn’t feel hungry; he felt _purged_ , as though he’d finally dumped a large load of poison he’d been carrying around for months.   
  
He gazed at Potter in wonder. _It’s no surprise that he’s managed to make the relations between pure-bloods and Muggleborns so cordial, if that’s an example of what he does._  
  
Potter swallowed the last of his wine and gave him a small smile. “That was a more pleasant conversation than I’ve had in months,” he said. “I hope it was beneficial to you as well.” He stood up, shook Draco’s hand, and started to turn away.  
  
Draco blinked again and stood up, too, reaching out to lay a hand on Potter’s shoulder. He felt suddenly so panicked that he hardly cared who saw him do it. “Wait. You can’t—you’ll stay and have a piece of chocolate with me?” Astoria’s house-elves were laying out neat plates of delicious-looking desserts on every table. “A bit of talk?”  
  
Potter gave him that elusive smile he’d used when they began the conversation. “Why would I? You wanted to talk about what made you leave Britain, and I’ve listened. I doubt any other subject could absorb us as much.”   
  
Draco stared at him and tightened the hold of his fingers on Potter’s shoulder. He felt inexplicably scorned, though there was no insult in what Potter had just said. Draco had become used to spotting hidden insults when he was with Paul. “But we’ve hardly said anything. About that date—”  
  
“I have a _very_ full social calendar, I’m afraid,” Potter said lightly, and stripped Draco’s fingers off with a neat sideways step. “I hope that you find someone who can do you a greater service than I can in healing your heart.” He gave Draco an amiable nod and worked his way to the far side of the room, collecting his cloak from the house-elves with a smile that made them look as if they’d like to melt on the spot. He was gone before Draco could take a step after him.  
  
Draco stood there staring, until it would have become too obvious. Then he turned to fetch dessert. But his heart was thumping angrily.  
  
 _I assumed that showing him my real, vulnerable self would provoke him to show his real self in turn.  
  
He didn’t mock me. He didn’t betray me. But he didn’t respond the way I wanted him to._   
  
“I did tell you he was skilled in countering the offers he receives,” Astoria murmured as she floated past him.  
  
That she was right did Draco’s temper no good at all.  
  
*  
  
Harry took a deep breath and shook his head as he stepped out of the Zabinis’ house. The front porch was in the shadow of a stone portico—convenient, as it was raining. He took a moment to tuck his cloak firmly around him and think over the evening’s accomplishments. True, he hadn’t done much once he sat down at Malfoy’s table, but he’d spoken to two possible agitators before then and convinced them to come and talk to the Ministry about their concerns.  
  
He didn’t always enjoy his job. He wished that Kingsley, in particular, was a bit less strict about demanding perfection from him. On the other hand, he knew that the pure-bloods would forgive no lapse from perfection, so the strictness was understandable.  
  
And perhaps it was premature to say that he hadn’t done much while he was sitting with Malfoy.  
  
Harry smiled and silently toasted himself. He’d learned early on in his training that there was no subject people enjoyed talking about so much as themselves, and many of the pure-bloods had to repress their personal interests and histories lest someone use their weaknesses against them. Harry could turn an annoying or uncomfortable conversation to their pet subjects with a bit of knowledge, and on they would prattle. It spared him a lot of effort, they almost never noticed what he’d done in the sheer absorbing relief of talking about themselves, and they didn’t ask questions about _him_ that might have proven problematic.  
  
It also didn’t harm anyone, since Harry didn’t use the knowledge he gained that way against them—unless they started talking about blood purity or conspiring against the Ministry. Then he lost his mercy.  
  
But it seemed as though Malfoy was about as far as possible from someone in either of those two categories. The poor bastard just wanted to talk, and his tale of thwarted pride was familiar enough to Harry.   
  
_Paul Breaker needs punching_ , Harry decided as he stood there, staring idly at the rain and waiting for a small pause so that he could run to the Apparition point. He could have used an Impervious Charm, but he was tired from playing his part today and didn’t want to make a mistake in the spell in front of pure-bloods.  
  
The conversation with Malfoy had even done something for Harry himself, since it had looked, just before he left, as though Malfoy was one of the rare people who’d figured out his tactic. He’d been angry about it, too. Probably offended enough to give up this ridiculous business of asking Harry for a date.   
  
Harry chuckled as he saw the raindrops stop falling quite as hard and dodged out across the flagstones surrounding the Zabini manor house. _Let’s hope he’ll find a nice Potions expert to fall in love with, because sympathy’s all he’s getting from me._


	3. Chapter 3

  
“Good work, Harry.” Kingsley studied the stack of reports in front of him, ornamented now with notes that he’d written down as Harry told him about his conversations at the Zabinis’ party last night, and finally smiled. “I think we’ve managed to prevent war for at least another week.” He signed one of the reports with a flourish and then leaned back, stretching his arms above his head.  
  
Harry gave a small smile back. He and Kingsley had a strange relationship. Harry reported all he saw and said and overheard at parties and galas, weddings and funerals, directly to the Minister, since no one else could be trusted with the sensitive information. Kingsley used that information to make decisions—from where to send Harry next to who might need to be followed or contacted and invited to air their grievances to the Ministry. The decisions he had made had mostly been good, and Harry couldn’t say that he had a complaint about what his observations were used for.  
  
At the same time, he couldn’t forget that Kingsley had originally got him into the intense training needed to make those observations because of guilt. He’d played on Harry’s guilt about not doing enough in the war, not doing enough _since_ the war to help wizarding society, and getting several of his partners severely wounded—and one killed—when he was still trying to be a field Auror.   
  
Harry knew he could stop being Kingsley’s tame gossip-hound if he wanted to. But then he would worry about the Minister’s decisions in the wake of his quitting. Besides, he didn’t think he would know what to do with himself now; he wasn’t made to sit around doing nothing in a secure house like most of the pure-bloods he knew.  
  
And the guilt would come back. At least he could keep guilt and depression at bay when he was spying because he was too busy to feel them.   
  
Harry shook his head. He’d had about enough of his internal monologue for one day, and he stood up and started to head out of the Minister’s office.   
  
Then he paused and thought again about something that had troubled him since he heard Malfoy’s story last night. Of course Malfoy had only told that story for an ulterior motive, probably to manipulate Harry into feeling so sorry for him that he would agree to go on a date. And of course he wasn’t the only pure-blood to stare into Harry’s eyes desperately after repeating some sad story and hope for sympathy.  
  
But Harry had got fairly good at telling absolute lies from smaller lies, at least. Malfoy’s story had the ring of truth.  
  
“Kingsley,” he said, glancing over his shoulder. “I want to ask a favor.”  
  
The Minister looked up. He evidently found Harry’s continual dedication to his job a cause for unease—maybe because he remembered clearly how difficult the training to do that job had been—and he looked forwards to any attempt to repay him. Or so his wide smile said, at least. “Yes, Harry?”  
  
“There’s a potions brewer named Paul Breaker living in the States right now,” Harry said casually. “He hurt one of my—acquaintances. Someone who didn’t deserve to be hurt. A personal injury, not something that broke a law,” he added when Kingsley’s gaze sharpened, “unless breaking the common human code of decency is a crime, which it should be. But this person I know is still suffering under that injury. I’d like to arrange a bit of payback for Mr. Breaker.”  
  
Kingsley smiled. “Do you know,” he remarked, apparently to thin air, “I’ve always found the American Aurors annoying, officious, and overly dogged when they start having a reason to suspect someone. Forever staring penetratingly, tracking and holding up shipments of rare potions ingredients, asking questions that are a devil to answer properly. It would be a shame if something like that happened to Mr. Breaker.”  
  
“Such a shame,” Harry said gravely. “I hope it doesn’t.”  
  
Kingsley shook his head. “Alas,” he intoned, as he turned towards the fireplace that Harry knew connected with the International Floo, “sometimes bad luck has a habit of fastening onto one person and _continuing_ to happen. Very strange.”  
  
Harry flipped Kingsley a salute and stepped out of the office, feeling happier than he had in a while.  
  
 _Since last night_ , he realized with a start. _Good God, I_ know _that Malfoy was only telling that story to get close to me. That’s how I heard all about Pandora Nelson’s grandchildren and Pius Thicknesse’s diseases._  
  
But it seemed that part of him was softer than he’d thought any part still could be, and believed Malfoy without reservation, and wanted to punish the man who had hurt him.  
  
Malfoy would never know, of course. Harry doubted that he was still in contact with Breaker, and he had no reason to connect Harry with the harassment even if he heard about it. It would only seem like karma coming around.  
  
 _As it should be_ , Harry thought, and then smiled. Now that he was done with his report to Kingsley, he could go home, throw off these uncomfortable, restrictive robes, and claim his bet from Ron. As usual, the Cannons hadn’t won.   
  
Besides, Ron was always the most fun to tease when he had a hangover and Hermione was keeping the Hangover Potion out of reach “to teach him to behave himself.”  
  
Whistling cheerfully—there were fewer people to think savage things about him in the Ministry than in the pure-bloods’ parties—Harry went to have lunch with his friends.  
  
*  
  
“Draco.” Blaise’s voice was gentle. “Don’t you think that you’re taking this a _bit_ personally?”  
  
Draco didn’t answer for long moments, too busy gazing in the mirror. He nodded. Finally, the dark robes he’d chosen hung on his shoulders the way he wanted them to, and he’d enchanted them to a shade that made him look intriguingly pale instead of washed-out. “Potter will eat his heart out,” he muttered. Then he turned a bright glance on Blaise and smiled. “I’m sorry, did you say something?”  
  
Blaise sighed, stood up, and reached out to clasp Draco’s shoulders. Draco moved backwards in response. “Don’t touch,” he warned. “I just got my robes the way I want them, and if you make me have to arrange them again, then Astoria will need to send the house-elves looking for your teeth.”  
  
Blaise looked faintly impressed for a moment before he shook his head. “It’s nothing _personal_ , Draco. Potter always does this. People try to enchant or bribe him, and sometimes that includes appeals to his sympathy. He always listens enough to make them feel good and then slips away when they try to tighten the noose around his neck. That’s what he did with you.”  
  
“But mine was different.” Draco could hear the vibrating tension in his voice, and he thought about concealing it, then decided he didn’t care. The things he said, both to Potter and to Blaise, were _true_ , He would make them recognize that if it took him years. “I told him what really happened, something I didn’t even tell you or my parents, and he flung it in my face.”  
  
“What would you have done if he’d believed you?” Blaise asked.  
  
Draco snorted. “I asked your wife to seat me together with Potter at that party, and you still don’t know what I want?”  
  
“Wrong question, then.” Blaise leaned on the wall and stared up at the ceiling, a technique that Draco had seen him use many times to control his temper. “All right. If Potter had accepted everything you said from the beginning and offered you all the sympathy you wanted, what would you have _felt_?”  
  
Draco paused. Then he turned away and looked into the mirror once more, smoothing his hand down the front of his robes and pointedly ignoring Blaise.   
  
“Draco.” Blaise paused, seemed to see not much good coming from that, and then began to recite in a singsong voice. “Draco. Draco. Draco. Draco. Draco. Dr—”  
  
He spun back, his wand drawn, and cast a Silencing Charm. Blaise closed his mouth at once and looked smug. Draco spent a few moments persuading himself that Blaise’s looks wouldn’t really be improved if Draco moved all his hair to his chin, and then shook his head.  
  
“Yes, all right, you’ve made your point,” he muttered. “I would have felt contempt for him for believing me so quickly and easily. I might also have been embarrassed. Any lover I take has to be clever enough to distinguish traps from reality.” He glared at Blaise. “But it’s unnatural for him to feel _nothing_.”  
  
Blaise reversed the Silencing Charm with a bit of nonverbal magic. “Why, Draco? You would have felt nothing before Breaker. You would have felt nothing if you’d spent the last five years in England, the way you _should_ have, and led the same kind of life Potter has during that time. I’m worried about you because I don’t think that you really know what you want. A perceptive lover who gives you the benefit of the doubt, but also doubts you, because that’s what someone intelligent would do? That’s impossible.”  
  
Draco frowned and spent a few moments considering. The substance of Blaise’s complaints was nonsense; Draco knew why he had been so affected when Potter pushed him away after listening to his story. But the suggestion that he didn’t know what he really wanted from Potter was probably true.  
  
 _And what do I want?  
  
Someone who will do what Paul couldn’t. Someone who will make me feel at home and listen to me, respect me, and give me the sympathy he couldn’t. Someone who will care for my pleasure as well as his own in bed. Someone beautiful, so that I don’t have to be ashamed of being with him.  
  
But what makes me think that I’ll find that person in Potter?_  
  
Draco relaxed and attempted to sigh out most of his frustration. He had latched onto the first person he saw and tried to sculpt that person into the image of the man he wanted. It was exactly the same thing he had done with Paul: he was so eager to find someone who would love him unreservedly that he chose bad candidates. He didn’t want to _wait._  
  
And he still didn’t see why he should have to wait. But it appeared that the universe did not want to be just to Draco.  
  
“You’re right,” he told Blaise, who looked suitably baffled by the compliment. It wasn’t often that Draco made a mistake. “Potter acted exactly like any proper pure-blood would—which means he isn’t the man I need. I’ll give up chasing him quite so hard.”  
  
 _But I still want to have my revenge on him. I took a risk, and it only failed because Potter_ had _to be so proper. He’ll learn better, and I’ll leave him stinging and smarting when I move on to find my perfect man._  
  
“I’m proud of you, Draco,” Blaise said, while looking at him if as if he’d announced a passion for Weasleys. “Forgiveness is a rare virtue.” _And not yours,_ said the loud silence between them.  
  
Draco smiled serenely and faced the mirror, once again adjusting the hang of his robes. “Thank you,” he told his reflection. He added a few subtle glamour charms, then began tuning them. He’d been in close enough contact with Potter now that he could use magic to catch and hold his attention, even if against his will, though the glamours weren’t strong enough to make Potter think him beautiful or fall hopelessly in love with him.  
  
 _A few stumbles in the dance. A longing look on his face as he realizes what he can never have. An erection or two in inappropriate places. Any of that would be enough for me._   
  
He knew he was lying as he thought it. He could no longer be satisfied with such mundane punishments, not when his pride was still recovering from Paul’s injury to it.  
  
But it sounded like a good place to begin.  
  
*  
  
 _He’s using magic, the little git._  
  
Harry found his eyes wandering to Malfoy again, leaving the face of the woman, Emma Lansby, he was whirling around the dance floor. He nearly tripped over his robe, and righted himself only with a slightly too enthusiastic swing to the left. Lansby frowned at him. She was the sort of pure-blood who tended to judge on superficialities and assume that any mistake was a harbinger of more to come. And Kingsley had told Harry that impressing her was of the first importance, since, while on the surface this was a party to celebrate the betrothal of two young pure-bloods, it was an open secret that some of the more rigorous blood purists were meeting here. Lansby was to be Harry’s ticket into the party beneath the party.  
  
Malfoy, of course, moved around the floor at the moment with Astoria Zabini, his back to Harry, but that didn’t matter. Even his _shoulders_ could be smug.   
  
Harry turned back to Lansby, smiled gently into her eyes, and placed one of his hands over his heart in a short bow. Not incidentally, that brought his hand near the wand housed in his left sleeve. He murmured an apology at the same moment as he cast the _Finite_ that would break whatever charm or glamour Malfoy had on him.   
  
The magic melted away, and broke an invisible tension in the air. Harry let his smile at Lansby acquire a touch more reality. “My lady,” he murmured, “I was most interested in the presentation that you gave at the Minister’s lunch a fortnight ago.”  
  
The title “my lady” was ridiculously flattering, but of course Lansby swallowed it. She smiled back for the first time and began to expand on the subject of the speech, which was the “duty” of wizards to “breed with their own kind.”  
  
Harry listened with interest that she probably misread as eagerness to know more about the subject. On the surface, it was “only” Lansby and her group saying that wizards shouldn’t marry Muggles, but Harry knew exactly where that led.  
  
It didn’t matter, though. He got paid to comb through the shite so that other people didn’t have to. He could entertain himself by thinking about the expression Lansby’s face would wear if she ever realized the use to which her information was being put.  
  
*  
  
 _He broke the charm._  
  
Draco slid into the chair next to Astoria and swallowed to keep his fuming silent. He had expected to have a good time at this party. He was escorting Astoria due to her wanting to attend and Blaise needing to work late at the Ministry, and she was an elegant and amusing companion. Besides, he’d already seen Potter stumble twice as he escorted his dance partner.  
  
But Potter wasn’t looking at him now; instead, he was talking intently to a witch several seats down as if he cared about her empty-headed notions. Draco had designed the glamours to strengthen throughout the evening, so by now Potter should have been leaning around his neighbors to peer at Draco. The only explanation could be that he’d broken the spells.  
  
Draco smiled viciously as he remembered another of his schemes for revenge. It took a moment of careful maneuvering under the table; he didn’t want to aim his wand at the wrong person. But at last he found the angle and murmured, “ _Salax_.”  
  
Potter’s lips thinned, and his eyes bulged for a moment as though someone had pinched him on the arse. Then he half-closed his eyes as a bright red flush stained his cheeks. Draco chuckled. He would have an erection rising between his legs at the moment, and no way to deal with it subtly, given how close he was seating to his table partners. He tucked his wand into his sleeve and leaned back to enjoy the show.  
  
“Are you all right, Mr. Potter?” the woman seated beside him asked. Draco identified her after a moment as Emma Lansby. He could have laughed aloud with delight. _Trust her to notice something wrong and confront him about it._ Already Lansby was puffing herself up like a pigeon, ready to seek out something that could offend her. Potter’s right hand was next to her, too, and he would have to move his wand openly to counteract the spell. It was perfect.  
  
Potter bent over Lansby, a faint smile on his lips. Draco almost missed the small movements of his left hand and the easing in his face a moment later. _He canceled my spell again_ , Draco thought in stupefaction. _And with his left hand, no less._ “I know that I can trust you,” Potter whispered. “I actually have an allergy to—”  
  
Draco didn’t hear what kind of food Potter claimed was responsible for his condition, but whichever one it was, Lansby believed him. Her face smoothed out; her eyes gleamed with interest. No doubt she thought she knew something incriminating about Potter now. When she tried to follow up her “advantage,” of course, it would turn out to be illusory.  
  
Draco ground his teeth. _Nothing is going the way it should_.  
  
“I’ve often found,” Astoria remarked out of nowhere, “that those who continue foolish pursuits are the ones who end up caught, rather than their prey.”  
  
Draco turned to her. The address almost meant he _had_ to, reluctant as he was to take his eyes away from Potter. “Pardon?”  
  
“Branson and I were discussing hunting,” Astoria said, with a slight gesture to the wizard seated on the other side of her. She picked up her wineglass and took a sip, her eyes bright and sharp as glass. “He remarked that a foolish pursuit happens when one knows the prey has the power to turn and rend one—and one does not have adequate defenses prepared in case that happens. I remarked that it was indeed the most foolish pursuit I could think of.” She leaned closer and lowered her voice into a hiss. “Well, perhaps one is more foolish, but surely no one I know would engage in it.”  
  
Draco drove his fingers into his palm. That was permissible since his hands were beneath the surface of the table. Above, he kept his face expressionless and nodded in response to Astoria’s words. “Stupid, indeed.”  
  
Branson demanded to know what they were talking about. Draco left Astoria to deal with him, as he knew she would, effectually, and turned back to his interrupted meal. His mind burned with humiliation, and he did not look at Potter again.  
  
Potter soared untouched through Draco’s attempts to trap him as well as interest him. Draco knew _he_ should have been the one to have such perfection by this point in his life, on the cusp of thirty, and he would have possessed it if not for Paul.  
  
And Potter.  
  
Draco nodded and smiled in response to something Astoria had said, but his eyes were fastened on Potter again, and this time he was making a promise to himself, something that would allow him to avoid the foolish pursuit Astoria had talked about, so he saw no need to apologize. _I am going to make him pay.  
  
But not here._  
  
*  
  
Harry flung himself into his favorite chair and sighed in relief, reaching for the glass of butterbeer that stood ready on a nearby table. He swished a mouthful of it around, washing out the taste that the wine had left behind. It had been especially bad tonight; apparently the Arrows or Westerlands, whichever family had been responsible for catering the party, had palates like leather. The bad taste wasn’t helped by Lansby’s teasing hints, either. She hadn’t got him into the inner circle of pure-bloods this time, but _sometime_ soon…  
  
He took a satisfied glance around his home, strengthening his sense of himself by the _opposition_ of everything he could see to the houses where he normally spent his time. A Gryffindor banner, red and gold, hung above the fireplace, surrounded by Quidditch brooms that had been gifts from companies hoping to curry his favor. Harry couldn’t ride one of them without offending the other companies, so he hung them up and he and his friends made fun of their more ridiculous features. The walls were red and gold in that part of the room, white in most other places, with a comfortable brown carpet that made Harry feel as if he were sinking his toes into grass. Chairs and couches in various states of disrepair stood around the room. Harry had taken most of them from the Black house, and refused to allow Hermione or Kreacher to touch them, though he _had_ banished the smell of mildew and mold that hung around some of them. He liked the thought that these were the exact same pieces of furniture Sirius had sat on when he was young and flung himself on and off of. Probably he’d picked some of the stuffing through its holes when he was bored of listening to his parents rant on about blood purity.  
  
Hermione tried to get him to change the color scheme of the main room each time she came, and she found his bedroom, where Harry had mixed every strong color he could think of in various patches on the walls, horrifying. Harry didn’t care. He knew the pure-bloods he associated with would also find it horrifying.  
  
That was rather the point.  
  
Harry propped up his feet on the small shaggy stool and shut his eyes as he took another sip of butterbeer. A wizarding detective novel waited for him on the same table where the cup had been, tempting him to dip into the adventures of Wentworth the Elder, who had lost five whole years of his life to a Memory Charm and who continually won beautiful women only to lose them to burly Quidditch players, but Harry didn’t feel like it tonight.  
  
He sat there and let the tension coil out of his muscles instead, running old Quidditch plays over in his memory. Slowly, his mind worked its way back into balance and he lowered his defenses the way he never could when he was showing people his fake self.  
  
Then one of his wards blared.  
  
Harry spun to his feet, his wand dropping automatically into his hand. Not all the assassination attempts had stopped when he dropped out of the Aurors. He strode to the front door, where he could get a good glimpse of the intruder through a magically concealed peephole.  
  
Blond hair flashed near the window. Someone stood there and was peering inside in fascination. He must have been standing at a distance at first, and only moved closer in the last minute to trigger the wards.  
  
 _Malfoy._  
  
And Harry hadn’t drawn the curtains.  
  
He stood still for a long moment, his defenses swinging back up, his mind spinning in place. He would have to do something to keep Malfoy from spreading stories, of course. It was one thing to choose to reveal his sloppy lifestyle as a weapon or during a final mission to break free of pure-blood society altogether; it was another thing to have someone spy it out and rush off to tell people.  
  
Especially someone who had a grudge against him because he apparently expected Harry to fall into his arms crying with pity.  
  
Harry finished the minute of standing still and decided on the mask to use. Then he opened the door and went to Malfoy.  
  
*  
  
Draco had been startled first by the small size of the house that Potter lived in. He would have pictured him taking over a manor where he could hang mirrors in every corner and glance at himself admiringly, or at least practice expressions for the game that he still couldn’t be very good at.  
  
 _You know exactly how good he is_ , his memory whispered. _Good enough to make you look a fool._   
  
Draco snarled silently and moved around the house, keeping at a careful distance so as not to trigger the wards. Not to worry. He would make Potter look a fool in turn, and that would repay the debt. Draco could spend the rest of his life magnificently ignoring him, if he wanted.   
  
The house was surrounded by a forest of wards, all of which turned threateningly towards Draco as he tried to work his way in. He frowned and stood back, shaking his head. He reckoned people might still want to kill Potter, but it made his own task inconvenient. He would have to find a hole in them, or take the chance of Transfiguring or conjuring another intruder for the wards to pay attention to—  
  
Then he realized that a window on the ground floor didn’t have the curtains drawn over it. He could get a good look without breaching the wards after all.  
  
Chuckling at Potter’s carelessness, Draco drifted closer. He craned his neck, searching for a sign of glass that he could smash over Potter’s head, expensive silver he could tarnish, priceless heirlooms he could animate to dash themselves to pieces. Or maybe a long-term Dirtying Charm would be best. Potter was probably too virtuous to keep a house-elf, and it was _astonishing_ how much mess someone’s house could make when one enchanted it to do its very best.  
  
But the only thing visible through the window was—plainness. Homeliness, even, given the ugly gold and red color Draco could just make out splashed on one wall. A Muggle telly sat in one corner, and there were random flowers in vases, and Potter had his Quidditch gear arranged on a rack of ordinary wood near the door.  
  
Potter, at home, appeared to live like one of the lower classes.  
  
Draco remembered what Astoria had said about Potter never truly accepting the values and standards of the people he made his living among. Draco had assumed that meant Potter kept his disdain for blood purity firmly in place.   
  
But—not this.  
  
Potter was living two separate lives, and so successfully that he could apparently manage to keep his ordinary friends and not chase them off with snobby pure-blood ways, while at the same time never betraying to a class of extremely competent observers that he didn’t maintain those same courtesies in his private life. Draco swallowed. That argued better for Potter’s intelligence and perceptiveness than anything had so far.  
  
Which only irritated him further. Potter _ought_ to have been able to see that Draco was sincere in the story he told him, rather than only angling for a prize. Draco wanted to punish him for having the gall to be a _good_ match, someone Draco could have relied on to watch out for his best interest and appreciate his true worth, unlike Paul.  
  
“Malfoy.”  
  
Potter’s voice carried the same polished tone Draco had heard in it all evening, but this time he wasn’t controlling his expression. He stood on his front step, aiming his wand. Draco knew there was no chance that he would be able to draw his own before Potter would cast some spell.  
  
There was no choice for it but to try placation, and Draco was in a slightly better mood after seeing Potter’s home. At least he knew that everyone in his social circles was being fooled together, not only him. He held out his hands slowly and said, “Potter. Quite a difference between this haunt and your usual ones.”  
  
Potter didn’t smile. “I reckon you wanted to know a secret of mine, eh, Malfoy, in return for giving up one of your own? Well, you know it now. This _is_ where I live, and yes, I live rather like a pig. Satisfied?”  
  
Draco turned to glance through the window again. “Not like a pig,” he said. “I’ve seen pigs.” Paul would leave dirty dishes on the floor, stacked to waist-height, and drop any newspaper in the chair where he finished it, and never scrub his potions vials. It was a miracle he’d made as many discoveries as he had. “You’re neat. Just—less ostentatious than you should be.”  
  
“Should be.” Potter smiled now, but without humor. “Yes, of course you would think that. What you don’t understand, Malfoy, is that this is where my real self lives, unlike the mask I present to people like _you_.” He murmured several quick Latin words under his breath, and Draco felt a tight band of magic settle around him.   
  
“What did you do?” Draco demanded. Potter might not be an Auror, but he had trained as one for a while, and he was a powerful wizard, and he was irritated at Draco at the moment. Draco didn’t want to think about all the nasty possibilities that Potter could have just inflicted him with.  
  
“Cast a spell to ensure that you can’t talk about this secret to anyone else.” Potter shrugged. “I didn’t have a choice about revealing it, while you did, but this doesn’t hurt me as much as showing yours hurt you. We ought to be even now.” He started to turn away.  
  
“And that’s all you’re going to say?” Draco demanded in disbelief. He took several steps forwards and reached out to touch Potter’s shoulder.  
  
Potter ducked under his hold and cast another spell Draco didn’t know, one that built an invisible wall in the air between them. Draco found that out when he reached again and bruised his knuckles on nothing. He cradled his hand and frowned at Potter. “You _knew_ that I was revealing something heartfelt, and you chose to _ignore_ it?”  
  
Potter’s face worked for a moment, as if he were deciding whether to tell Draco something. Then he shook his head. “You don’t understand,” he said, with the same cutting patience he’d used two nights ago. “I could tell it was real, but lots of people tell me things that are real. That doesn’t mean they get to manipulate my reactions as a consequence.”  
  
“The _only_ thing,” Draco said, “that I wanted from you was some attention, some sympathy, and maybe a date.”  
  
Potter’s eyes widened. Then he said, “It sounds like you’re telling the truth.” His voice was full of wonder.  
  
Draco took a deep breath. His pride still urged him to have nothing more to do with Potter, unless he could make him look like a fool in public, but he was tired of acting according to the dictates of his pride. It was his pride that had kept him with Paul for so long, because it seemed better to stay than admit he’d made a mistake.   
  
_What do I want? That’s the question Blaise would ask me, and it’s still a wise one.  
  
The answer is that I want Potter, if I could be sure that he would be the kind of man I see glimpses of._  
  
“I am,” he said. “Please, will you come on a date with me?” The “please” hurt his throat, but he still said it. He stepped forwards, found the invisible wall gone, and brushed his fingers across Potter’s wrist, which made Potter’s eyelashes flutter. “As you said, we both know a secret now. I’d like to speak to you where others can’t overhear, where you’ll feel free to be honest.”  
  
Potter gazed at him steadily for a long moment. Then he shook his head and said, “I wish I could.”  
  
“What’s keeping you from doing so?” Draco demanded. He was seeing honest emotions in Potter’s eyes now, and they made his face more beautiful than ever. He took another step forwards. “I don’t think you have a lover right now.” Potter was the sort who would have made a space for his lover in his own house.  
  
“I don’t date pure-bloods,” Potter said calmly. “Or anyone involved in that kind of scene, really.” He turned away and started walking towards his front door again.  
  
Draco stepped in front of him this time. Potter stopped walking and rolled his eyes upwards. At least that was _some_ reaction. Draco found himself passionately wanting to force Potter’s emotions from him, as much as he ever had during his time at Hogwarts.  
  
“Rather prejudiced of you, don’t you think?” Draco asked, and let his face tighten with anger.  
  
“It has _nothing_ to do with that!”  
  
 _There it is_. Draco breathed in as if Potter’s rage was a scent he could smell, though he knew that was ridiculous. _I knew he could still feel. And look at the way his anger lights his eyes._   
  
“How in the world can I take a lover I can’t trust?” Potter snarled, leaning towards him. “Some of you lie so perfectly that I can’t tell lies from truth. Or you use the truth but for your own ends, the way I thought you were doing at the Zabinis’ party. I could _never_ accept that a pure-blood really loved me; the words might be a trick or a ploy to gain something else. I don’t want to play games twenty-four hours a day! I don’t want to play games in _bed_! That’s not me, the self that I show to you! I do it because I have to, and for no other reasons! I want to be my real self when I walk away from you, the real Harry Potter. And you think I’d take one of you into my house? As well take Voldemort!”  
  
Draco blinked in the face of the words, and searched himself for an honest and simple reaction, instead of the host of reasons he wanted to give. Potter would suspect sophistication.  
  
“The self you show me and people like me is your real self, as much as this one,” he said. “You’re too good at it to really be playing a role.”  
  
He started to go on, to explain that he wouldn’t demand perfect control of the emotions twenty-four hours a day, but he found himself facing an expression of such fury that he shut up. Potter was breathing hoarsely, his eyes wide and showing mostly the whites, his wand making warning creaking noises in his hand. His voice emerged a few degrees shy of a growl.  
  
“I’m _not_ like that. I’m _not_. I’m _not_ one of you.”  
  
The whites of his eyes showed even more. Draco stared, fascinated. _He fears becoming like us. That has to be the reason a simple suggestion can make him so angry._  
  
And then Potter turned away from him as if realizing what he’d revealed, said in a low, threatening tone, “You’ll stay away from me if you know what’s good for you, Malfoy,” and slammed back into the house.  
  
Draco stared after him and licked his lips. He would need to go away again, and think in more detail about what he wanted.   
  
But he thought it might be Potter.  
  
 _Passionate, capable of appreciating the truth when it’s shoved in his face, and so certain that no pure-blood will ever capture him…  
  
He’s at the very least an irresistible target. And perhaps he will teach me to stop wanting what I cannot have._  
  
*  
  
Harry closed his eyes and leaned against the door he’d shut behind him. He envisioned the pure-blood world Malfoy represented—the smirking, swaggering, laughing, staring world—and hoped he could shut it out the same way.  
  
Malfoy _couldn’t_ have known how much Harry feared turning into the uncaring bastard he played. It was a lucky guess. He was speaking from what he wished was true, and that was why his words had sounded so convincing.  
  
 _I’m not like them. I’m not really mannered and polite and a good observer and a witty conversationalist. I’m not.  
  
Because then I would have to be interested in superficialities and cynical and detached from life, as well. And I refuse to be that._


	4. Chapter 4

The Snitch streaked past Draco’s head as he stared into the distance, his mind brooding over Potter and what he should do in relation to him. He heard Blaise swearing, infuriated, in the moment before he pulled up next to Draco and yelled into his face.

“You were supposed to catch the Snitch! Why did you say you wanted to play Quidditch if you’re only going to stare and smirk at nothing?”

Draco turned his head to the side, blinking away the single drop of sweat that fell into his eyes, and smiled slightly at Blaise, who was clinging to his broom with a grip that whitened his hands and whose hair was flat with sweat. “I didn’t say I wanted to play Quidditch. You told me that we were going to play it because you ‘can’t put up with my sighing and staring and internal disappointment one second longer.’”

“Yes, but you didn’t disagree with me,” Blaise growled. “I expect you to pull your weight if you get into the air.”

Draco widened his eyes and looked around the Zabinis’ private Quidditch pitch with an air of surprise. “Pull my weight against who? The invisible Quidditch team you’ve invented?” He ducked suddenly to the side, shoving Blaise at the same time. Blaise fell for five feet, cursing again, before he managed to get control of his broom.

Draco looked solemnly down at him. “There was an invisible Bludger,” he explained. “It almost hit you in the head.”

“I give up,” Blaise said, speaking the words so harshly that Draco found it hard to recognize them, and then turned and dived for the ground. Draco followed him, grinning. Perhaps it was unfair to Blaise and his apparent desire to be a Quidditch star just shy of thirty, but the flight had cleared some of the cobwebs out of Draco’s head.

“So tell me, then,” Blaise said as he flung his broom to the ground and snapped his fingers for the house-elves to appear with glasses of water. “Have you actually decided anything? Or does your special, fragile little mind need some more time still to get over the wounds Breaker inflicted?”

Draco flicked him a rude gesture as he picked up a glass of water and sipped at it, but he didn’t really mean it, and Blaise could tell that. He stood a bit straighter, his eyes kindling with reluctant interest. “So tell me, what did you decide?”

“So interested in my sex life,” Draco teased him, fluttering his eyelashes at Blaise, who looked, briefly, as if he wanted to commit murder. “Anyone would think that you cared about me.”

“Any more of that, and Astoria can cope with blood on her floors,” Blaise said, returning the rude gesture. “I’m simply trying to determine how much effort we need to put into shepherding you away from disaster.”

“I’ve decided that I need to act like more of an adult with Potter.” Draco raised his shoulder in a shrug when Blaise looked at him in disbelief. “I know, that will be difficult. But either way has advantages. If I can actually apologize sincerely enough and not sound like an idiot when I talk to him, I might win him. If he still rejects me, it’ll be good for me, because it might teach me not to need someone quite so badly.”

Blaise sat back in the chair that one of the house-elves had dragged outside and surveyed Draco critically. “I have worried about that, you know.”

“My intense need for someone? Yes.” Draco swallowed more water, then snapped his fingers. “I want orange-flavored water,” he told the house-elf who appeared. She at once waggled her fingers over his glass, and Draco sighed in satisfaction when he raised it to his mouth again. “I think it started with Paul. He convinced me that love could be sudden, powerful, even overwhelming. It took me five years to realize that he hadn’t really taught me that, no matter how much it seemed he had at the time. And then I came back here and immediately tried to fasten myself to Potter.”

“Surely you aren’t going to tell me you love him.” Blaise’s voice had that extreme blandness it got whenever he couldn’t believe what he was hearing.

Draco gave him a lazy smile. “No. Only that he has some traits that make me think I could. And I discovered something about him last night, when I followed him intending to inflict revenge, that only makes me think so more.” I discovered that he wasn’t perfect. I discovered that he might need me for something as much as I need him, and that I might be better at something than he is: accepting the limits of pure-blood life, enjoying them, without resenting them.

“Well?” Blaise rapped his fingers on his knee, and Draco realized that he was waiting for some kind of admission.

“It’s a secret between me and him,” said Draco. “And I want to court him more than I want to satisfy your curiosity. Sorry.”

Blaise snorted. “Court. He has traits that you could love. Explain to me how this is supposed to get you over your need of someone?”

“Because it’s possible that he’ll reject me in spite of all the tricks I can bring to bear,” Draco said. “And if that happens, then I’ll be able to accept it. It won’t be an irreparable dent to my pride, because I’ll know that he evaded me the same way he would evade any other pure-blood.”

He winced at the last words, fearing he had said too much, but Blaise only looked thoughtful. “It’s true that he prefers to date Weasleys and the like,” he said. “Yes, I can see what you mean. It’s a rejection, but a gentler rejection than you got from someone like Breaker, who seems as though anyone can please him.”

“Or rather,” Draco said, which was as close he would come to telling Blaise the truth, “who implied that anyone could please him, while degrading me for failing.”

Blaise looked up and met his eyes. Draco looked steadily back, relying on Blaise’s friendship with him and the knowledge and experiences they had shared to fill in the blanks of the words he would never speak.

Blaise nodded at last and turned back to his own water. Draco tilted his head to study the sky. It had been clear when he and Blaise played Quidditch, but now the clouds were crowding in, and he could hear a few distant, loud vibrations that spoke of thunder.

A stray thought of genius struck him, and he felt his lips curve into a genuine smile.

I wonder if Potter has ever been to a Rain Celebration?

*

Harry stared at the owl that had arrived for a long time. The bird was of a kind he hadn’t seen before, small and silvery and perfect, its feathers tipped with white and its eyes a startling yellow that reminded him for a moment of Hedwig’s. The paper was a thick, creamy parchment that resisted folding, to the point where Harry wondered how Malfoy had got it into the envelope. The seal was a white peacock on a dark background with the letters of the last name Malfoy worked into the widespread tail.

The letter itself invited him to participate in a Rain Celebration, adding a short description: it involved a dance in the rain and a ritual count of the number of times lightning struck the ground in a certain place.

Harry had never heard of it, and he’d heard of most pure-blood rituals and dances and kinds of parties by now, so his first reaction was that Malfoy was making it up. But when he investigated the thick books that he’d acquired during his training and which he still kept piled in one of the back rooms, they described the Rain Celebration in about as much detail as Malfoy had given him. The authors hadn’t thought much of the thing, Harry decided, weighing the books in his hands. Probably because it didn’t involve as much posh clothing and attempts to sneer at other people.

Harry snorted and put the books down on the pile of others. Surely he wasn’t thinking of going? This was supposed to be a day when he could relax, since no important parties were scheduled (well, one, but Kingsley had told him to cut that one as a means of insulting and infuriating the hosts, who badly needed those emotions). And Malfoy hadn’t given him enough notice to find appropriate clothing.

Then Harry paused, and chuckled in spite of his lack of amusement at Malfoy’s brashness. There was one set of robes that he’d been looking for an excuse to get rid of. They were a bright, flashy silver, and had blue accents in all the wrong places. Harry had bought them on the advice of one of his instructors in pure-blood matters and had regretted it ever since.

I won’t mind if those get wet. And Malfoy said nothing about certain colors or fabrics or types of robes.

Grinning, Harry wrote an acceptance for the owl to deliver and then went to find the robes. He did wonder, briefly, as he dug through his closet, why he was doing this when Malfoy had been so rude to him last night and had followed him home in the first place, probably for some nefarious purpose.

Because I’m curious, he admitted to himself. Either he’ll make mistakes in an amusing way, because he still won’t have learned, or he’ll do something unexpected and gracious. It would help me make up my own mind, too, so that I know whether to feel sorry for him.

*

Potter looked—not exactly hideous in his blue-and-silver robes, but close. Luckily, Draco knew that he’d worn them because he would be getting them wet, and not because he wanted to show contempt for Draco by wearing clothes that would make Draco look ridiculous by association.

At least, he hoped so.

“Potter!” he called, and lifted a languid hand as Potter Apparated in and stood looking around. He sat on a white chair under a pavilion roof in a corner of an open field that Blaise and Astoria owned but had never yet used for anything. A second chair was beside him, and plenty of room had been left in the middle of the field for the dance. No one else was about, and Draco knew that was what made Potter look around suspiciously as he glided towards the pavilion.

At least, he hoped so.

“All right, Malfoy,” Potter said, with narrowed eyes and a smile that barely hid his anger, “what is this? You claim that you want me to attend a Rain Celebration, but this doesn’t look like one to me.”

Draco tilted his head back and studied the cloudy sky. A drop of rain fell as he watched, and another rumble of thunder sounded. “Did you know that people rarely look up?” he remarked to no one in particular. “Even when they have reason to.”

“I don’t count raindrops as people,” Potter said, leaning a shoulder against one of the slender white posts that supported the pavilion. “And to create celebrations, one usually needs people.” He paused, then added with delicate sarcasm, “Unless you’ve expanded your definitions admirably and are going to count the house-elves who obviously set this up as people.”

Draco took a risk and let the flash of temper show on his face. Potter raised his eyebrows, knowing enough to class that as unusual. Then he looked over his shoulder. Draco approved and felt insulted at the same time. Of course it was reasonable for Potter to suspect that this was a trap of some kind, or at least that cameras had been set up to record his reactions.

I don’t know exactly how I want him to act, Draco admitted to himself, as he stood from his chair and walked towards Potter. Like a pure-blood, because that’s the way I saw him acting and was first attracted to him, but also differently, because that would show he regards me as an individual and not part of the false world to be fooled.

At least my reactions should tell me a little more about what, or who, I want.

“A Rain Celebration is different from most other pure-blood parties,” Draco murmured when he stood a few feet from Potter. “It doesn’t need many people, because it doesn’t require conversation. Two dance partners, and two sets of eyes to count the flashes of lightning.” A flash broke overhead on cue, and Draco smiled. “Unless you object to being alone with me, of course.”

Potter raised his eyebrows. “Why would I? It seems that you only cause me inappropriate erections in front of an audience.”

Draco winced at the double statement implicit in that—that Potter would never get an erection when alone with him—but prepared to face up to the hardest part of what he had to do. He met Potter’s eyes and held them until Potter blinked. Draco wanted him to know how seriously Draco himself was taking this.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“What.” Potter made it into a statement rather than a question, and his voice was full of the flatness of disbelief rather than of rejection.

“I’m sorry,” Draco repeated. “Trying to take revenge that way was—stupid of me.” Potter continued staring at him, and Draco realized that he would have to speak more of his secret thoughts.

Either way, it’s good, he told himself firmly. It might play its part in winning Potter, and if not, it’ll teach me to stop flinching and being hurt all the time. I think that’s the worst thing Paul did to me; he made me too quick to react to injuries, even to overreact to them, and unable to simply adopt a posture of cool arrogance in response to them. He hurt me without my acknowledging it for a long time, and I should have responded earlier, but that doesn’t mean everyone is doing the same thing.

“I want you,” Draco said quietly. “You’re as nearly the opposite of Paul Breaker as you can be without deliberately setting out to be so. And when you rejected me, it felt like a rejection of me, not of the pure-blood deceptions and games, the way you explained it last night. So I thought I needed to get even.”

“You chose a childish way to do that.” Potter stood taller and tossed his head back, which gave him the impression of looking down his nose at Draco. It was one way to achieve that attitude, Draco thought, which surely couldn’t be natural for Potter.

Draco took a deep breath. “I know, and I’ll ask you to accept my apologies for that as well. I’m more ashamed on my behalf than you could ever be,” he added wryly. Lying awake last night, it had come home to him with unexpected clarity how stupid his revenge was. If he couldn’t refrain, he should at least have chosen something more impressive, so that Potter would feel some pain instead of simply humiliated. “But—the fact remains that I want you. So I’m asking you to give me a second chance. If you won’t, then tell me why, and I’ll see if I can give you what else you need. If not, we’ll part, and I won’t approach you again.” He watched Potter closely when he was done. He might easily see some subtle clue in the flickering of a brow or an eyelash, though it might not be a clue that Potter was aware of himself.

*

Harry felt as though someone had just unleashed a devastating flood on him, and the flood’s name was Malfoy. He stood there blinking, unable to respond, and felt the remains of his scorn cling and drip all over him like inconveniently wet clothing.

Not exactly the kind of rain I thought might destroy these robes, he thought, and stared unseeingly at the storm that had begun to fall on the field. His emotions cascaded back through him, flooding his head again, and with a different kind of material.

I never imagined Malfoy would apologize. It wasn’t something he had heard from any other pure-blood in the last five years. Sometimes one of them who had offended him would grovel to him and attempt to gain his favor back, but they seemed allergic to the straightforward words. I never imagined that he would tell me what he wanted and be so frank about it.

That honesty appealed to Harry more strongly than anything else Malfoy could possibly have done.

He had to wonder if Malfoy knew that, of course.

But when he looked back at the quiet face in front of him, straining to conceal emotions that he suspected were as diverse as his own, Harry had to shake his head. No. At some point he had to stop the suspicions and accept that his own ability to read faces and postures was as good as it should have become through his extensive training. If he suspected every gesture someone else made and distrusted his reading of it, then there was no reason to stop. He would indulge in a spiral of paranoia all the way down.

Malfoy had seen the shake of his head, and evidently mistaken it for a negative response. He drew himself up, and said, “I understand. Will you explain?”

Harry reacted to the injured pride visible in that swift motion, something he doubted Malfoy would have wanted him to see, and reached out to put a hand on his arm. “I’m not refusing you,” he said quietly. “I’m just stunned by the pace at which this has moved. Most of my—negotiations—with pure-bloods take more time than this.”

By the time he reached the end of that sentence, some of his barriers had risen again. Yes, Malfoy had done something interesting and unexpected. That didn’t mean Harry could associate with him safely or productively. That didn’t mean that he would want Malfoy in return.

Except…

Harry didn’t like to admit it, but Malfoy—always assuming his emotions and apology at the moment were genuine—was more attractive than anyone Harry had met in several years. His friends were his friends, and Harry couldn’t imagine dating any of them, not now that he’d moved on from Ginny and the few women (and one man) Hermione had tried to introduce him to had all been disasters. His training had influenced him enough that he would like to date someone with politeness and some sense of aesthetics and culture, he could admit that. But he didn’t want the scorn for people like his mother and the short-sighted love of manipulation that always seemed to go along with that.

If Malfoy could shed that, if he could look past blood politics and be witty and charming instead of coldly courteous…

If, if, if. There was no way to know that.

But if Harry was looking to spend time with Malfoy to decide if he should date him, he didn’t have to use the same strict calculations that ruled him when he was performing for the Ministry. He was allowed to use different standards. He was allowed to think about what mattered to him, and not to Kingsley’s purposes or the goal of preventing war. He didn’t have to decide that any end he couldn’t foresee was a waste of time.

“Really?” Malfoy asked, and though, again, Harry doubted he meant to do this, his face showed hope as openly as naked bone showed dirt.

Harry smiled in spite of himself, flattered by the hungry way that Malfoy looked at him, and a bit worried. “Yes,” he said. “But tell me this, Malfoy. Do you really want me at your side, or would a substitute do? Do you want someone to date, or anyone?”

*

Draco winced again. Potter’s training didn’t give him the power of persuading everyone at first glance, the way Blaise had made it sound, but it certainly gave him a way to probe into Draco’s tender places with a scalpel.

You invited him to when you told him that you were sorry for what you’d done.

Briefly, Draco wished he could take back the apology. But since it had Potter looking at him with something like an appreciative light in his eyes, he doubted that he would, after all. He had to forge ahead.

“I want you,” he said. “But I might also want anyone. That’s one of the reasons why I’m talking to you the way I am, because it might help me figure out for myself how deep my neediness runs.” He looked directly into Potter’s face and held the gaze for an uncomfortable amount of time. Potter started a little. Draco doubted that he had expected that from a pure-blood. “I don’t think that you’ll let me continue in neediness for very long, if you agree to be with me on a test basis. You’ll drive it out of me, because you won’t be able to stand it. If you ultimately walk away from me, then I’ll get over it in the hard way, by suffering through the consequences of having no companion.”

Potter regarded him thoughtfully. Draco added, “I don’t think it’s the way you’d prefer to conduct a relationship, is it? But it will make me stronger. And I think that I might be able to provide some of what you need, as well.”

Potter gave him a slow smile with a hint of something self-mocking to it. “I’m not the same person I was five years ago,” he said. “I would have rejected you without a pause, because it would have seemed too rational to me. Not passionate enough.”

“And now?” Draco asked, hardly able to breathe for anticipation.

“Now I’ve seen the harm passion can cause.” Potter’s face shuttered for a moment. Then he shook his head and added, “Or even excessive friendliness. It isn’t always necessary to be friends with someone you’re going to date first, though it’s preferable. Yes, Malfoy, let’s do this. I’m curious as to how it’s going to work out, personally.”

Draco extended his hand without hesitating. Potter’s amused tone rankled, and yet, just as he would have scorned Potter for believing his story without resistance, he had to admire the way Potter held himself aloof from immediate emotional entanglements. Potter clasped his hand and shook it back.

Draco turned his fingers so that they brushed over Potter’s wrist, remembering that he’d liked that gesture. Potter let his eyes flutter shut and took a deep breath, as though reminding himself of where they stood. Draco repeated the brush of fingers. Potter pulled his hand away a bit more harshly than was necessary. Draco concealed his smile and nodded to the field. “Shall we?”

“We’re still holding the Rain Celebration?” Potter stared back and forth from him to the field. “I thought that was only an excuse to get me here.”

“I would never abuse the Rain Celebration in that way,” Draco said in a shocked voice, and waited until Potter’s mouth tightened, doubtless with his thinking Draco was a too-proper pure-blood, before he added, “Plenty of other ceremonies, but not this one. It’s too fun. And the dance is simple. Circles, with joined hands. Shall we?” He held out his arm.

Looking as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or run away, Potter laid his hand on Draco’s elbow. Draco stepped out into the rain, shivering slightly as it pelted onto his hair and slid down the back of his neck; it was colder than he would have liked.

“What about the Impervious Charms?” Potter’s voice was uncertain, as if he thought that mentioning the charms might be verboten at a ceremony like this.

Draco turned to face him, and let a smile widen across his face. “What charms?” He dropped his arm, leaving Potter’s hand to swing in air for a moment before he recovered control, and then took both Potter’s hands. “Come on. The rain is meant to be enjoyed. We’ll start moving left first. Go right when I tap your wrists. Can you do that?”

Potter, who had been listening with an intent look on his face that Draco could picture him wearing when he learned other new things, gave him an offended glance. Draco winked at him and began to spin to the left, laughing as he tilted back his head and the rain soaked into his eyes and mouth.

He had to blink several times to get it out of his eyes, but it was worth the effort to watch Potter. Potter was moving opposite him, his steps perfectly correct but mechanical, and his expression uncertain. It appeared that he hadn’t had fun in years and wondered how proper it was to have it.

“Relax,” Draco whispered, and tapped Potter’s wrist so that they had to start in the opposite direction. They shuffled, their robes dragging at their ankles as they grew heavier with water, their feet crushing grass with a soft squeaking sound.

*

I would never have thought that pure-bloods could enjoy something like this.

Yet no matter how many times Harry blinked—he eventually pulled his glasses free altogether with a wandless spell and tucked them into a pocket of his robe—Malfoy didn’t vanish or turn into someone else as his Polyjuice wore off. He was laughing, not seeming to care that now and then he had to pause to spit out rain. He was spinning like a child, and ruining a pair of green robes that were fine if not handsome, and he didn’t care.

Harry felt his own resistance begin to melt in the face of such a contradiction. The next time Malfoy shook his head so that his hair would flop out of his eyes and smiled at Harry, Harry smiled back.

Malfoy stopped their spinning just before Harry would have had to stop it himself—he was getting dizzy—and then took just one of his hands. “Now we proceed straight across the field, and dance back and forth at the same time,” he said.

Harry raised his eyebrows. “That’s not a dance, it’s a drunken stagger.”

Malfoy laughed at him. “Now you understand why Rain Celebrations are more uncommon than they used to be,” he said. “There are some people so uptight that they can’t stand the thought of looking less than dignified. Of course, they often do anyway, but they can tell themselves that it’s for some grand purpose in that case. Harder to do that when they know it’s simply to celebrate the rain.”

I’m not one of those pure-bloods, Malfoy’s smile said, and when he stepped forwards, wavering as though he walked an invisible line, his relaxed body confirmed it. Join me?

And Harry threw caution to the winds for almost the first time in front of a pure-blood since he’d become Kingsley’s gossip-hound, and did so.

They waded and stalked and staggered across the grass, their robes puddling around them now, their faces half-frozen with the assault of the cold rain. Malfoy kept laughing. Harry found himself joining in without intending to. He thought of what other people would say, including his friends, if they could see him behaving so madly, and he rejected it. It was more fun to feel the tug on his hand from Malfoy’s weight, to counter it with his own, and to see if they would actually make it to the other side of the field before they fell over.

They didn’t. Malfoy tripped over his own robe hem and rolled on the ground with a little yelp. Harry followed, unwilling to break the tight grasp of his fingers on Malfoy’s wrist. They rolled together and mingled sleeves, arms, and legs.

Malfoy lay flat on the ground, not seeming to care about the giant dirt smear that would certainly give him on the back of his robes, and laughed aloud. Harry propped himself up on an elbow and grinned down at him. Their fingers were still intertwined.

That was when he realized for the first time that Malfoy was beautiful. Yes, his beauty had some of the elegance and sharp angles always associated with the other pure-bloods Harry had met, but there was a—a resilience that expressed itself in the freshness of the skin and the jut of the chin that Harry hadn’t seen before. He wondered absently if that was why Malfoy had got out of his entanglement with Breaker so ready to take on another one, in the form of a possible relationship with Harry.

“That was fun,” Malfoy said, when he finished laughing. He laid an arm across his forehead, somewhat shielding his eyes from the flow of water, and smiled up at Harry. “That’s the purpose of the Rain Celebration, you know. An excuse for fun.”

Because his hand was cramping and for no other reason, Harry pulled his fingers free from Malfoy’s. He sat up and finally cast an Impervious Charm so that his robes would stop dripping on his hands. “I’ve never heard of a pure-blood ceremony like that.”

“There are several of them,” Malfoy confessed, flipping himself up on his own elbows but still lying full-length in the wet grass, “but this one is the most openly laughter-inducing. I admit, of course, that a large part of the fun is in knowing that you can go home to a warm shower and a change of clothes afterwards.”

“Of course,” Harry said, quirking a smile again at the open, shining face Malfoy regarded him with. It had to have borrowed some of the shine of the rain, he thought. No one with the last name of Malfoy could look that bright naturally.

Malfoy paused thoughtfully. Then he added, “And it let you unite the two aspects of yourself that you regard as separate, you know.”

Harry stiffened. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, though he had an excellent idea of what Malfoy meant.

“I meant that you were participating in a pure-blood ceremony,” Malfoy said, “and yet you acted less stiff and more open. And you were in front of me, a pure-blood, and yet you weren’t constantly checking for traps.”

“That’s because we were alone.” Harry stood up and moved a few steps away. Maybe this is a bad idea after all. “If we were in public, then I wouldn’t have acted like that.”

“I know,” Malfoy said gently, scrambling to his knees, “but I think that you don’t need to divide yourself quite so deeply. You can have the virtues of our society and get rid of the faults, if you want. You don’t need to make yourself dirty because that’s ‘real.’”

“My house isn’t dirty,” Harry snapped, folding his arms.

“I know,” said Malfoy, “but the way you spoke, you made it sound as if it should be, because you’re so against the pure-blood values that you shove all of them to the back of your mind the moment you leave our parties. And yet, your house is clean, and your speech remains well-mannered even when you’re speaking to someone who tried to humiliate you, and you’re perceptive whether or not you want to be.”

Harry turned his back. “I don’t need to listen to this,” he said flatly.

“Not even if you’re trying to date me?” Malfoy asked. “Not even if I’m complimenting you, instead of speaking an insult? I do find the ‘natural’ you the more attractive one, but that’s simply because I can understand your emotions better. I don’t think you need to live in dirt and be rude to be genuine.”

“I’m not rude—”

“No, and I think you should value politeness,” Malfoy said, standing up completely this time. “But arguing that you hate all pure-blood values and then staying polite, when you consider courtesy part of those pure-blood values, is a bit disingenuous, I think.”

Harry turned and Apparated from the field without speaking. Anger surged through him like the flood of emotions that Malfoy had first unleashed in him.

_He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He wouldn’t like the real, genuine me, and probably, this dating experiment will end with the result that neither of us wants, because he simply can’t stand me._

*

Draco watched the spot where Potter had disappeared thoughtfully. It seemed strange that he could be so threatened by hearing positive statements about himself, and gentle accusations.

Then he remembered how much of himself he had had invested in the perception that he was a person Paul loved, that Paul was only testing the strength of his commitment and would come around eventually, and that the very stubbornness Paul showed “proved” that he cared more about Draco than a person who simply and straightforwardly loved someone else.

_He has a lot of himself invested in the perception that he’s really an outsider to pure-blood society, not one of us._

_I’ll have to show him that he can be both._


	5. Chapter 5

  
Harry received two letters that morning. One was from Malfoy, asking if he could visit Harry in a place that wasn’t a pure-blood haunt, perhaps even one where he drank with his friends. Harry sat holding that letter for a long time and staring at it, mostly because he couldn’t believe it. He finally put it aside to consider later.  
  
The other letter was from Kingsley. Harry sat up as he opened it, expecting some instruction to visit a party that night.  
  
It wasn’t like that at all. Harry read it through and then sat still with the feeling that the world as he had known it was falling in around his ears. It was almost as powerful as his feelings yesterday when Malfoy had flooded his brain. He shook his head once and started reading the letter a second time, with more attention to detail.  
  
 _Dear Harry,  
  
Word has reached me that you are consorting with Draco Malfoy. This in and of itself is not a problem; we have no evidence that he has committed any crime since he was exonerated after the war, and his years in the States were peaceful. But others are beginning to notice, those who have some ancient reason to be hostile to the Malfoy family and those who are angry that Lucius is no longer in the forefront of blood politics. Among the latter is Emma Lansby.  
  
I would like you to stop associating with him for at least six weeks. That should be long enough to lull Lansby’s suspicions and get you into the secret parties for blood purists we have been hearing so much about.  
  
Sincerely,   
Kingsley Shacklebolt._  
  
Harry traced a finger over the signature, as if that would make a difference to his decision. Then he laid the letter next to Draco’s and looked back and forth between them. They both had the power to turn his life upside-down, if he let them. He had never even thought about introducing any pure-blood into his “common” activities.  
  
He’d also never thought about letting his career dictate who he dated. Until this point, it hadn’t been a problem, as he’d dated only people the blood purists would never have heard of, but it _could_ have become a problem if Kingsley had wanted him to flirt with someone he despised.   
  
_It briefly was a problem._   
  
Harry carefully barricaded his memories of his first year among the pure-bloods off with walls of glass and shoved them to the back of his mind. He didn’t think about things like that anymore, because he hadn’t had a failure like that since then.  
  
Which didn’t help him make his other decisions. What was he going to say to Malfoy? Did he want to take this attempt to understand each other that far, that he would let Malfoy invade his private as well as his public life? Did he want to obey Kingsley, the way he probably should if he wanted to keep peace?  
  
He sat back and looked carefully at Kingsley’s letter again, scrutinizing the words, playing them out in different tones in his head so that he could get the impact that he would if Kingsley spoke them. It was always risky “translating” letters like this, but, if successful, it could produce a great deal of nuance that Harry didn’t usually notice because his training had concentrated on the spoken word.  
  
 _“Consorting.”That’s an odd word to use. He makes it sound as if we’re plotting a conspiracy to overthrow the Ministry. I don’t think he can know about my meeting with Malfoy yesterday or the one on my doorstep, which means that he’s going off one conversation at the Ministry gala and the one at the Zabinis’ party. He doesn’t usually jump so hastily to a conclusion based on who I talk with. He also couldn’t have just wanted me to ignore Malfoy; that would be sitting up trouble and grudges we don’t need, especially with Lucius.  
  
“Those who are angry that Lucius is no longer in the forefront of blood politics.” He has reports on Lansby—I know that I’m not the only person watching her—but it’s stupid to think that she wants that. She’s too glad that she has the chance to make the blood purist movement do what she wants now. And she wouldn’t want to share power, as she’d be expected to do, with someone who has a better standing than she does among the purists. Whoever watched her behavior and concluded that she wants Lucius back is mistaken. Or else they’re interpreting the empty words of regret she speaks as the real things_.  
  
Harry suffered a brief spasm of irritation at that. He hated it when he conflicted with the various other spies that Kingsley set on pure-bloods, because none of the spies were as close to their subjects as Harry was, and ninety percent of the time they made mistakes he didn’t. _Do none of them ever listen to tone?_   
  
He shook aside the anger, which would only get in the way as he tried to analyze Kingsley’s letter, and went back to looking at it.  
  
 _“For at least six weeks.” That wouldn’t be long enough to lull Lansby’s suspicions, whatever Kingsley thinks. At the moment, she has no suspicions, no reason to think that Malfoy is more important to me than she is. But if I start avoiding him in a marked manner—the way I would have to, since he’ll attend many of the same parties I will—she’ll notice and draw a wrong conclusion, perhaps that Lucius is making an attempt to return. No, what Kingsley wants me to do is the exact wrong way to go about things._  
  
Harry snorted and rose to his feet. He had occasionally improvised in the past, ignoring Kingsley’s instructions to do the more politically expedient thing. He would do that now, but with more care.   
  
He would use his training against the Minister until he ended up agreeing to let Harry do what he wanted.  
  
With that in mind, Harry decided that he would invite Draco out for a date in a more common restaurant. He wasn’t _quite_ ready to let him meet Ron and Hermione and the others yet, in part because he didn’t know how Draco would react when he met them. But yes, they needed to see each other in a different setting than the parties they’d attended so far, and they needed the public factor, to see how that would influence their behavior, without the judgment factor of a pure-blood party.  
  
 _I’ll date him if I want to, and Kingsley can’t tell me no._  
  
*  
  
“Ah, Harry.” Kingsley waved him to the chair opposite his desk. Harry had free access to the Minister almost the instant he wanted it, since so many of his reports were important. “Did you receive my letter of this morning?”  
  
 _Head up_ , Harry snapped at himself in the voice of one of his instructors. _Look him straight in the eye and wear an earnest expression, but keep your shoulders relaxed. Don’t hurry through your words. Give him no reason to suspect deception._  
  
“I did.” Harry leaned forwards and gave the Minister a warm stare. “And I wondered if you had considered the information you received about Emma Lansby in all possible lights.”  
  
A faint wrinkle marred Kingsley’s forehead. “Are you saying that you think one of us might have been suborned by the pure-bloods?”  
  
 _By the blood purists_ , Harry corrected, mentally wincing at the clumsy comment. He might sometimes think all pure-bloods acted the same and would be improved by more diversity of principle and perspective, but he would never _say_ such a thing. The blood purists were the ones Lansby led, and they had to be dealt with differently than the ones like the Zabinis, who had invited half-bloods besides Harry to their party. “I don’t think so,” he said. “But Lansby is complicated. She’s a blood purist who wishes to keep the old name while disassociating herself from the bad reputation they earned during the war.” He paused significantly.  
  
“I don’t understand what you mean,” Kingsley said, after a long minute in which he was obviously trying to think of something to say and failing.  
  
“Part of that bad reputation comes from the Malfoy name,” Harry pointed out gently. “She doesn’t want Lucius to come back. She’s happy that he attends only two parties a year, if that. That gives her the power and the space to be in control. If he tried to take over the movement, there are people who would at least give him an ear, his family is so old. Lansby’s parents only achieved prominence after a hard struggle. She has every reason to want the Malfoys to remain in the background.”  
  
“Then she might view your consorting with Draco Malfoy in an even worse light,” Kingsley said with some alarm. “You should separate yourself from him immediately.”  
  
 _The use of that word was no accident_ , Harry thought, and tamped down the anger that immediately tried to rise up his throat and enter the conversation. It wasn’t worth losing Kingsley’s confidence by snapping defensively.   
  
“I honestly don’t think she’ll notice him,” he said. “Draco isn’t a blood purist; he left the country for five years, and hasn’t had the chance to build a base of power here; the reason he left isn’t one that makes people respect him.” He had to suppress a wince at that. Defensiveness in favor of Draco’s reputation wouldn’t help, either. “I should be able to maintain connections with them at the same time.” He moved on before Kingsley could question that. “I think the true problem is Lansby. Who do you have watching her?”  
  
“Karen Shambles.”  
  
Harry had to conceal a snort. Shambles was a good observer generally, but she was Muggleborn, and her own prejudices interfered when it came to judging the nuances and attitudes of pure-bloods. “I would move her somewhere else,” he said. “Instead, choose someone who can consider Lansby objectively.”  
  
“Objectively?” Kingsley stared hard at him. “Are you sure that _you_ are not the one losing perspective, Harry? Perhaps blending a bit too much with the pure-bloods that you are meant to keep yourself separate from?”  
  
 _Bloody—He’s not fooled. He’s still thinking about the way that I want to associate with Malfoy, and he’ll translate that to treachery in his head if I’m not careful_. Luckily for Harry, and unfortunately for Kingsley, the training that Kingsley himself had insisted on Harry taking had given him the perfect response to that accusation.  
  
Harry drew himself up in the chair and gave Kingsley a haughty stare. “Are you suggesting,” he said, and dropped his voice slightly on the verb to emphasize his incredulity, “that, after five years when I’ve done more than anyone else in Britain to prevent war between the blood factions, that I would be going over to them _now_?” The bit about his preserving peace more often than anyone else was something Kingsley had told Harry himself and evidently believed true. “Or is it more likely that Karen Shambles is wrong?”  
  
Kingsley backed down at once, of course. _He must fear that I really would break ranks and stop spying on the pure-bloods if he pushes too hard_ , Harry thought clinically as he watched Kingsley mumble a few apologies.   
  
_Now to reconcile him to my closeness to Draco. He still hasn’t accepted that, and he must, unless we are to tolerate constant interference._   
  
Harry let his voice rise again and adopted a more normal expression. “There are times, however, that I need a reminder that not all pure-bloods are the same as people like Lansby, or I would have a good reason to leave my duty behind and never return to it, out of sheer disgust. Malfoy is a good remedy for that disgust. He has an innocence about him that charms me, because he’s been out of the country for five years and so he isn’t involved in any party politics. It would be counterproductive to stop associating with him at this point and solely drown myself in Lansby’s filth.”  
  
“Yes, I quite understand that,” Kingsley said. “I was simply puzzled by your marked partiality for him.”  
  
 _Of course, he probably took the opportunity to check on who Paul Breaker would have offended when he ordered the American Aurors to harass him._  
  
“It is more marked than I would like at the moment,” Harry acknowledged freely. It could still be disastrous if Lansby or someone who reported to her saw him associating with Draco in that way—but he didn’t think they would notice, if he had read them right. And his job depended on reading them right, after all. “But that should endure only until he does something stupid, which won’t be long, knowing Malfoy.”  
  
 _Even that is true. This ‘relationship’ between us is risky, and stands as much chance of self-destructing as it does of lasting._  
  
“All right, Harry.” Kingsley looked at him gently now, as if he knew how much effort Harry had put into constructing the mask that fooled him. “I simply wanted to be sure that you weren’t making a mistake.”  
  
 _I am the one who must determine that, and not you_ , Harry thought coldly as he bowed his head to Kingsley. _You determined_ that _when you gave me this training and set me loose on the pure-blood world. I would have thought you had adapted to it by now._  
  
*  
  
Draco looked around a bit nervously as the server ushered him to a seat. He hadn’t been in the Three Broomsticks often since he’d used the Imperius Curse on Madam Rosmerta, and he kept expecting someone to pop to his feet and point an accusing finger.  
  
“You’ll find it much changed,” murmured the server, a young man who had recognized Draco’s name and face easily. “Madam Rosmerta retired a few years ago and gave the management of the business to her niece.”  
  
Draco relaxed and sat down at the table that he had agreed to secure for him and Potter. When he slung his cloak around his chair, he thought he could feel some sharp stares. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of turning around and staring back. He was here to enjoy the food and the drinks, the same as they were.  
  
Of course, no one else in the room would have the privilege of Potter’s company.  
  
As if Draco’s thoughts had summoned him, Potter appeared in the doorway. The same server who had escorted Draco practically ran to him and bowed and groveled as he led Potter over feet and through a forest of elbows and gaping faces. Potter nodded to him as if he had done a perfectly normal thing and ignored the stares the same way Draco had.   
  
It was Draco he held his hand out to, Draco he gave a dazzling smile that held an edge of ferocity to. Draco caught his breath as he shook Potter’s hand, wondering what had happened since they had last seen each other. _Something_ obviously had.  
  
But it wouldn’t have been polite—or productive, Draco suspected—to question Potter about it before he was ready to answer the questions. Draco had learned something from his overeagerness to make Potter analyze his own feelings about pure-blood politeness. So he asked, “What do you usually eat when you’re here?”  
  
Both of Potter’s eyebrows rose, and he relaxed a little, as though Draco had distracted him from something he’d been brooding on. “You’d trust my taste?”  
  
“Of course,” Draco said. “You’re dating me. That says everything about your taste that needs saying to educated people.”  
  
Potter laughed. Draco half-closed his eyes and gloried in the sound. It was a more private laugh than Potter had used so far, as if he weren’t judging the effect on the audience and worrying about its being too loud.  
  
And he wasn’t, Draco realized, as Potter called for butterbeer and Draco politely concealed his wince concerning the common nature of the drink. Potter seemed to consider this a space where he could do as he liked, without word getting back to the Minister or the people he was paid to fool. He sprawled in his chair, his head tilted back, his eyes less watchful than normal.  
  
That didn’t mean they weren’t watchful at all, Draco realized when a young man, nudged by several of his friends, stood up from a nearby table and started walking towards Potter, obviously practicing words under his breath. Potter draped his head over the back of the chair to look at him upside-down. The boy actually froze with one foot in the air.  
  
“No autographs today,” Potter said.  
  
The boy scuttled back to his seat. Draco laughed himself this time, and Potter shook his head at him in a way that reminded Draco of his mother doing it about the lack of manners in the younger generation. “You have to do something to discourage them, or everyone in the room comes after you at the next free moment,” he explained. “Or sometimes even when your mouth is full or you’re talking.”  
  
“I hope that those two things never happen to you at the same time,” Draco said, with a mock-horrified look. It was time to find out how far he could go in teasing Harry about his manners.  
  
Harry froze like the boy had, but only for a moment. Then he snorted and said, “That’s one thing Hermione would agree with you on. The desirability of its not happening, that is, not the fact that I do it. She was always trying to get Ron to shut his mouth and stop spraying food all over the place at Hogwarts.”  
  
Draco restrained himself from a shudder. After all, Harry was watching him. Luckily, the butterbeer came to the table then and provided a good distraction. Draco picked up his mug and took a drink without thinking about how it would taste beforehand.  
  
When it hit his throat, an odd sensation came over him. There were so many times that he had come here with his friends on Hogsmeade weekends and had butterbeer. It was all they could have in public until they came of age, and so the taste of the drink was the taste of childhood. Draco felt stupid for not realizing that before.  
  
“I’m glad that you like it,” Harry said, and Draco heard both wonder and suspicion in his voice.  
  
Draco wiped his mouth, put his mug back on the table, and said, “It would be silly of me to accept it if I disliked it.”  
  
Potter peered at him, his voice half-mocking. “Not even to be polite?”  
  
“There are ways of accepting food, and even pretending to eat it, so that you won’t offend your host but won’t gag at the same time,” Draco said in his loftiest tone of voice. What he was about to say was a risk; he hoped it was a justified one. “Remind me to teach you those some time.”  
  
Potter blinked at him. Draco held his breath. He was implying that Potter wouldn’t have learned those things during his training, and thus that Draco knew the pure-blood world better than he did. He could either feel insulted about his supposed lack of knowledge or accept it because that “proved” that he was more at home in common surroundings like this. Draco didn’t know him well enough yet to feel sure of what he would do.  
  
Then Potter relaxed and laughed, lifting his mug in a toast to Draco. “I’ll learn those from you, and with pleasure,” he said. “I have the feeling I could learn a lot of things from you.”  
  
“Such as?” Draco leaned forwards and fluttered his eyelashes outrageously.  
  
Potter didn’t laugh this time, but he did smile, which was almost as good. “How to look down both sides of my nose at a person at once,” he said. “How to look as if I smelled something bad at all times. How to be pointy and look good with it.” His voice softened and roughened on the last words.  
  
“You think I look good.” Draco made that a statement by the barest margin. He reached out under the table and laced his fingers around Potter’s. He knew what level of intimacy _he_ was comfortable with, but not what Potter would want to advertise to the public. At least, he didn’t know what Potter wanted to advertise _yet_.  
  
“I do.” Potter’s smile had vanished completely, and his gaze was intense in a way that made Draco’s eyes water. He could see why so few people wanted to risk a direct confrontation with this man.  
  
“Well,” Draco said, “then I reckon I ought to tell you what I find beautiful about you besides your manners.”  
  
Potter’s face went pale and then red in a matter of seconds. He cleared his throat. “You don’t have to, if you’d rather not,” he said. The confrontational aspect was gone; his eyes darted nervously to Draco’s face and then away. “You could, but I don’t want you to think that it’s required when you’re on a date with me, to return compliment for compliment.”  
  
“I want to,” Draco said. He opened his mouth, ready to choose his words carefully.  
  
“What do you want to eat?”  
  
Draco nearly leaped when the server stopped next to their table, and settled for a glare. The woman blinked back at him. Potter took over, and, with a laugh in his face, ordered ham sandwiches. Draco would have objected, since that really _was_ common food, but then thought it would taste like childhood again, and kept quiet.  
  
Potter sat there for a few minutes after the woman had left, his finger tracing an old beer-stain on the table as if it fascinated him. Draco wondered if he would change the conversation and try to leave the compliments far behind.  
  
Instead, though, Potter drew a deep breath as if asking the air for courage, looked up, locked his eyes on Draco’s again, and said, “What is it about me that you find attractive?”  
  
*  
  
Harry watched Malfoy struggle with a distant amusement. He was weighing his words, deciding how much he wanted to say. It was the exact same thing Harry had done a short time ago, but Malfoy had different considerations riding on the words he chose. He might offend Harry by implying that what he liked about him was only the pure-blood manners he had adopted.  
  
 _Well, he_ will _offend me if that’s the only thing he likes_ , Harry decided. _But we’ll see what he says. And nothing Kingsley can say will make me change my mind about him. He’s the only one who can do that._  
  
“You are beautiful,” Malfoy said at last, and Harry found himself breathing slowly, as if that could keep Malfoy from realizing how much those words affected him. “I never imagined that you could be. You’ve put on weight and height, so you’re not the scrawny little git that I remember hating. It’s the intelligence and life in your face that make your expressions attractive, you know. One eighteen-year-old who hasn’t seen much of life looks pretty much like another one. Now you’re experienced.”  
  
Harry coughed and sat back in his chair uncomfortably. He hadn’t had someone tell him that before. There had been people who laughed at his lack of experience when he was first beginning his career among the pure-bloods, and the women Hermione had tried to have him date had almost all told him that his polished manner came across as insincere. One of the reasons he’d broken up with Ginny was that she still thought him too childish. This kind of compliment was so new that Harry didn’t know how to respond.  
  
Malfoy didn’t wait for him to respond, however, but plunged straight ahead. “Your courtesy is part of what I like about you, yes. But you don’t have a malicious intent behind your courtesy the way that so many people I know do. You want to deflect them or let them down gently when you aren’t willing to give them what they want. Most of the people I know—Blaise and his wife excepted—are bent on letting the other person suffer the sting of their scorn or their superiority.”  
  
“Their _supposed_ superiority,” Harry couldn’t help muttering, because he hadn’t met any pure-bloods that he would call really splendid people.  
  
“Of course,” Malfoy murmured. “But that attracts me to you. And your showing of your emotions, as I said before. Those emotions are always present and burning just beneath the surface when you put yourself on display, did you know that? I think that’s one reason you’ve been successful when someone else trained by the Ministry might not be. Of course many of my class know that you’re spying on us, but they don’t care, it’s done with such care and gentleness. That lack of malice, as I said before.”  
  
Harry did clear his throat this time. “Let’s talk about something else.”  
  
Malfoy shrugged gracefully and moved out of the way so that the server could set their plate of ham sandwiches down in the middle of the table. “Of course we can. What do you want to talk about?”  
  
Harry thought quickly. Potions, Slytherin House, pure-blood ceremonies—those were the subjects that Malfoy had waxed enthusiastic about when Harry had known him in the past. And now it seemed that he was somewhat enthusiastic about Harry. Harry wasn’t about to encourage that, though, when it embarrassed him so much.  
  
 _Potions it is_ , he decided, and fixed his gaze on Malfoy. “How much practical Potions experience do you have?” he asked. “I knew you were good at Potions in Hogwarts, of course, but I never knew how much the practical work fascinated you and how much the theoretical portion did. The only thing I knew was that you had to _understand_ the theory, which was more than I did, since you got the potions right.”  
  
“The practical portion is my strongest suit,” Malfoy said, and bit into a sandwich, taking small, neat bites that Harry approved of despite himself. “I can find theory only so fascinating when I can’t translate it from mental abstractions to the physical reality.”  
  
He swept into a flood of talk that Harry only barely understood, but where he did comprehend it, he could make half-intelligent contributions. Malfoy eyed him tolerantly when he did that and corrected his mistakes, then talked more happily and faster, waving around a crust of his sandwich as he did so.   
  
Harry found it difficult to take his eyes away from him, which was not a thing he had thought he would ever say about Malfoy. He hadn’t been lying when he told Malfoy he was attractive, but this was something else again. Malfoy was open and shining, the way he had been when they laughed during the Rain Celebration. Harry had thought that a one-time-only experience, but it didn’t seem so.  
  
Malfoy leaned back in his chair as the evening wore on, and drank more butterbeer, and ate four whole ham sandwiches. He didn’t seem to care about the amount of food, the way some pure-bloods Harry knew would have, but he didn’t drop crumbs on himself or spray bits of half-chewed food in all directions, either. Harry reluctantly acknowledged that either would have made him turn away in disgust.  
  
 _Maybe he’s right and the manners have become more a part of me than I like to admit._  
  
He drove the thought away. It came back. He was in a perfectly casual setting and in front of people whom he didn’t have to impress, and yet he still shuddered when he glanced over at another table and saw it covered with rings of liquid, foam, crumbs, and dirt that had no reason to be there. If he carried those values with him out of a pure-blood setting, then why should he say that they weren’t a part of him?  
  
Harry swallowed. _Is it a bad thing that it’s Malfoy’s—Draco’s—use of those values that makes me less opposed to considering this than usual?_  
  
The fact remained that it was a fascinating evening, though Harry could rarely participate in the Potions shop talk. Harry could enjoy just watching Draco gesture and listening to him converse, without having to anticipate, as he did with Pandora Nelson’s Potions shop talk, the context of all her remarks and what she would say next and whether all of it meant anything politically.  
  
“But enough about me,” Draco said, cutting off so abruptly that Harry actually blinked. “What about you? Don’t think it’s escaped my notice that I’ve learned more about you by my own observation so far than by any conversation.”  
  
Harry hesitated. There were few words in his mind, now. He couldn’t talk freely about his deepest emotions when he was still sorting those out himself, and he couldn’t talk about the meaningless, false things he used when he was in front of other pure-bloods. Not in front of Draco, and not after what Draco had shared with him.   
  
_No, that’s not true. There’s one subject that you can discuss with him, and that you know he’ll like hearing about._   
  
“I’d like to ask you a favor,” he told Draco. “Could I—could we step outside the tavern for a moment? Let me pay, and then we’ll—we’ll talk. Please?”  
  
Draco raised his eyebrows, but nodded, and Harry paid. Then they stepped outside. Harry deliberately didn’t glance around to make sure there wasn’t anyone watching after they’d moved away from the door. He wanted some privacy, but not secrecy. He didn’t want Draco think he was ashamed of what he was about to do.  
  
Draco stopped walking and turned to face him. His face was perplexed. “I really am puzzled about what you want from me, you know.”  
  
Harry reached out, seized Draco’s chin in a grip he thought was clumsy, and guided their mouths together. He didn’t kiss with the sort of finesse he’d been imagining; he lapped at Draco’s lips for a long time before Draco slowly parted them, and then he jumped when their tongues tangled together, like the most naïve teenager.  
  
But he was giving all he had to give, trying to share all the passion and the uneasiness and the defiance against Kingsley and the questions that Draco had roused in him _with_ Draco, and that was more than he had done with anyone in several years.  
  
*  
  
Draco hadn’t expected the sudden kiss, but he wasn’t about to complain.  
  
Potter—Harry—kissed with too much force and with his eyes closed, as if he thought he was about to be rejected. Draco reached up and stroked his cheek, soothing his eyes open. Harry gasped, which made an interesting sensation in Draco’s mouth, and opened them.  
  
Draco gasped himself when he saw the emotions shining there. The anger he’d goaded out of Harry when he trailed him home was as nothing to this. Harry didn’t seem to know what he was showing or how to control it, and yet he showed it anyway. Draco saw fear and anger and determination and lust and happiness leaping there, changing places so fast that only the training he’d had from childhood enabled him to read them at all.  
  
 _See, Harry, that training is good for some things, sometimes_ , he thought, and curled an arm around the back of Harry’s neck to drag him closer.  
  
Harry renewed the kiss at once, as if he’d been uncertain and waiting for an invitation. Draco wanted to laugh. He thought Draco was going to turn him away, when he’d been speaking the truth about his own attraction all evening?  
  
 _Maybe he did. He’s still not sure what to do when he can’t use that mask of his._  
  
That was a problem, but it was for later. Draco traded control of the kiss back and forth, delighting in the magic he could sometimes feel flicking behind Harry’s tongue, seeking an outlet, and the strength in the slender body that leaned against his. Then he pulled free at last, with a slight lap, and laughed, because he had no other way to express his satisfaction.  
  
Luckily, Harry didn’t take the laughter the wrong way. He gave Draco a slightly embarrassed smile and stroked his jaw. “I know,” he said. “What do you think we ought to do now?”  
  
“It’s a little early for either of us to invite the other one home,” Draco said, tracing the shape of Harry’s collarbone. “Let’s go home, and…think about each other.” Harry’s widened eyes and dilated pupils said he knew exactly what Draco meant. “We might each feel differently in the morning, I don’t know.”  
  
Harry flinched a little at that dampening remark, but he understood a moment later and nodded. Of course Draco had to take note of that as a possibility; keeping track of consequences like that was something Harry’s training would have enforced on him sooner or later, and it was better for Draco to mention it first.  
  
With one final, hesitant smile and a slight flourish of his cloak as if he wanted to bow but didn’t think it appropriate, Harry Apparated away.  
  
Draco went down a side alley where he could get away from curious onlookers, and danced a small impromptu jig, listening to his feet sliding on the wet stone and thinking of the way he and Harry had danced in the Rain Celebration two days ago, and danced while standing still today.  
  
Blaise’s house-elves scolded him when he got back because of the mud and filth smeared on the hem of his robes, but Draco didn’t care.


	6. Chapter 6

  
Harry’s plan was to wank over Draco when he got home, fall asleep in the middle of his sheets after a quick Cleaning Charm, and then wake up in the morning so that he could take a proper shower and wank over him again.   
  
As it happened, only the first part of the plan went according to schedule. He woke in the middle of the night to a terrific hammering on his window and leaped to his feet, rubbing his eyes. There was only one kind of owl that knocked like that.   
  
His heart began to pound, and he had to swallow several times before he could lower the wards on the window and let the bird in.  
  
One of the Ministry’s express owls circled his head three times, then landed on his shoulder. Harry winced, since he’d been sleeping naked, but bore with the fact that its claws were drawing blood. The express owls had been crossbred with falcons so they would fly faster, in quiet defiance of the ban on experimental breeding, and Kingsley never used them except in an emergency.  
  
The letter was simple and short, but it still made Harry’s stomach throb and clench into a ball like a fist.  
  
 _A prominent advocate for Muggleborn rights has attacked Emma Lansby. Lansby is demanding a term in Azkaban for him. At the moment, she’s at St. Mungo’s. I need you to go to her and do anything you can to prevent her from demanding so extreme a sentence._   
  
Harry closed his eyes. He knew why this was so important. Not only would it poison relations between pure-bloods and Muggleborns incredibly if a leader for _either_ side was condemned to Azkaban, which was still a horrible place, but Lansby would become overconfident if she managed to secure this, and so would other pure-bloods. They would press for more and more concessions from the Ministry. When Kingsley refused, as he would have to when their demands became unreasonable, they would become discontent and drift further away from the central government of the British wizarding world into their own small parties that might foment rebellion.  
  
 _Or open war._   
  
Harry went mechanically to choose his robes, his mind already flinging itself through the loops of memory. He called to mind all the conversations he’d ever had with Emma Lansby, and decided based on them what he would wear.   
  
Dark grey robes, the color of a stormcloud, but not all the way to black. Harry knew how to create embroidery enchantments that would last a few hours, and so he would embroider eagles onto his sleeves and collar. The symbol of Lansby’s family was the eagle.  
  
Sympathy and mourning at once, as if he were afraid that they would lose Lansby. He would soothe her and coax her and drag her back into service to the Ministry so gently that she wouldn’t know it hadn’t been her own idea.   
  
Which would be exhausting.   
  
Harry grimaced and shrugged. _I still choose to do the job. I could quit if I really wanted to_.  
  
*  
  
“I see your boyfriend’s been out preventing war again,” Blaise told Draco in the morning.  
  
“Someone has to,” Draco responded automatically, and sipped at his tea before he realized that Blaise had had a sharp note in his voice, instead of the wry one he seemed to get when he talked about Potter most of the time. He leaned back, blinking, and asked, “Has something happened to Harry?”  
  
“ _Harry_ , even,” Blaise told Astoria, who sat across the table from him and was eating delicately buttered scones with fingers that somehow missed getting even the slightest scrap of stickiness on them. Draco was used to good manners, but Astoria’s were almost unnatural. She gave Blaise a level look in response to his statement and picked up another scone.  
  
“It was in the papers this morning,” she said blandly, “that events somehow conspired to do Emma Lansby an injury, by means of that insufferable Muggleborn bore Ernest Poppycock. She’s in St. Mungo’s for the injury, and Potter is with her, wearing those dove-grey robes I’d like to know where he bought.”  
  
Draco hesitated for a moment. He was not sure how much Blaise and Astoria knew about the truth of Harry’s job. Certainly they had no idea how thoroughly he despised most of the pure-bloods, so Draco would have to tread carefully in his attempts to defend Harry.  
  
“You surely can’t think that he’d want to spend any more time in Lansby’s company than _absolutely_ necessary?” he asked Blaise. “I know that I would rather hate it, myself.”  
  
Blaise gave him a flat, unreadable look, and then turned back to his own breakfast, which he didn’t eat anywhere near as neatly as his wife. Draco wondered idly if Astoria had known that before she married him. “That’s just what I don’t know,” he said. “Lansby is the worst sort of blood purist—loud and demanding. Potter doesn’t _have_ to spend time around her. And yet he chooses to. He was even dancing with her at the last two parties.”  
  
Draco regarded Blaise reflectively. He’d never been sure of what Blaise’s own feelings on blood purity were. He didn’t particularly like Muggleborns or half-bloods, but he invited them to his house. He called the Weasleys blood traitors, but he admired them enough to think their daughter was pretty. He seemed to admire what Harry was doing in trying to prevent war between the factions, given the note that had been in his voice when they saw Harry at the Ministry gala.  
  
It was the last part that decided Draco. “I have excellent reason to think,” he said, “that Harry’s playing a long game in which the winner is the person who gets closest to Emma Lansby.”  
  
“Not a prize I would choose in any game I organized,” Astoria said. She had finished her breakfast now, and all the crumbs had magically vanished. Draco wondered if she had placed a house-elf under a Disillusionment Charm and ordered it to hover around her plate, picking them up.  
  
“Well, of course not,” Draco said. “But you can consider what stakes someone who had to play the game might think were worth the risk.”  
  
A thoughtful silence settled around the table. Draco sipped at his orange juice and hoped he hadn’t made a mistake.   
  
Then Blaise murmured, “I was planning on not inviting Potter to the party that we were going to organize next month in celebration of the end of the war. If he simply attached himself to Lansby, he wouldn’t come. She always avoids celebrations like that,” he added to Draco, and Draco nodded. Of course Lansby would if she were a hardcore blood purist, since she probably believed that the fall of Voldemort was the biggest defeat blood purity had ever suffered. “Now I wonder if I ought to reconsider the invitation.”  
  
“It would give me someone to dance with,” Draco said in a carefully bored tone.  
  
Surprisingly, Astoria laughed, making Blaise and Draco look at her. She was sitting back in her chair, her blonde hair playing freely around her face, and a spark of wicked humor in her eyes that was directed at both of them.  
  
“It’s perfectly obvious that you’re unhappy believing that Potter is really Lansby’s running hound, Blaise, and it’s perfectly obvious that you don’t think he is, Draco. So why shouldn’t you extend the invitation, since it will give both of you so much pleasure?” She rose to her feet, shaking her head. “These rules we live by should never be the excuse for pain. We do much too good a job of inflicting that on ourselves.”  
  
And off she floated. Draco blinked at her back. Then he turned to Blaise.  
  
“I think you have a remarkable wife,” he said.  
  
Blaise smiled back at him, the deepest and most relaxed expression Draco had seen on his face since he came back to England. “I know it,” he said.  
  
“If I were interested in women, I might even be jealous,” Draco said, rising to his feet, and watched Blaise’s face change before he went off to write to Harry. He wouldn’t go to St. Mungo’s, even though he was sure that Harry could use the support, just in case he interrupted some delicate political dance, but an offer of a date at the Three Broomsticks might be what he needed.  
  
 _Maybe. You don’t know._   
  
But that was the pleasant thing about this relationship, Draco mused as he sat down to write. It wasn’t closed-off in love, the way he thought his relationship with Paul had been, and so he was much less worried about being perfect.  
  
*  
  
Harry sighed as he flung himself into his chair and closed his eyes. That had been _exhausting_. Lansby had required more reassurance than Harry had realized it was within his power to give. Somehow, he had dug down into himself and tamed his impatience and frustration with her and his hatred of blood purist rhetoric, and given her the listening ear and firm hand that she needed.  
  
Somehow, he had convinced her that it would be a much more entertaining spectacle, and much more embarrassing for Poppycock, if she pushed for a public hexing and a fine instead of an Azkaban term. After all, without the money that he needed to fund his pet projects, Poppycock would be much more frustrated than he would be if he found himself in Azkaban and could act like a martyr. And it might take him months to overcome the effects of several good, combined hexes.  
  
Not the best solution, but then, neither was the way that Poppycock had stepped into the middle of a volatile situation and waved his wand around. Harry hoped that Kingsley, who would be handling Poppycock, sat on him, hard, and quelled any tendencies to speeches full of suffering. Harry couldn’t deal with speeches full of suffering right now.  
  
Something pecked him on the shoulder. Harry opened startled eyes and found the owl that had delivered Draco’s last invitation to dinner sitting there, head tilted to the side as if it thought of knocking on his skull next.  
  
Harry removed the letter from the owl’s leg and opened it, wondering if he had the strength to deal with Draco after today. It was almost six, in any case, and Draco might already have dinner plans.  
  
 _Dear Harry,  
  
I understand that your duties with Emma Lansby have grown harder. I wondered if you would like to go to the Three Broomsticks again and spend a little time in the company of someone who will be considerably softer than she was—unless you prefer a certain part of me to grow hard.  
  
Yours,  
Draco._  
  
Harry smiled at the ridiculous innuendo, which told him something about how far he’d fallen in relation to Draco.  
  
But the thought of the Three Broomsticks made him want to vomit. There were Muggleborn advocates who made that one of their regular meeting places, including some of Poppycock’s followers. They would certainly come up to him and confront him about what he’d been doing in hospital instead of joining them in demonstrating outside the Ministry.  
  
A sudden thought struck him, and Harry acted on it before he thought better of it He turned the letter over, Summoned the nearest ink and quill, and wrote, _Why don’t we go to the Perpetual Party? I’ll be there at eight._  
  
He hesitated, then added, _Yours, Harry_. He felt a bit silly copying Draco’s closing, but at least it conveyed some of his feelings without involving him in the difficulties of deciding on different words. And his intention to attend the party anyway left Draco an out if he didn’t want to come.  
  
With some gratitude, Harry went to change out of the grey robes and into the red-and-gold ones that were his favorites. With proper tailoring, they looked actually elegant. Harry grinned. If Draco came, Harry could surprise him by showing him that Gryffindor colors and beauty were not mutually exclusive.  
  
*  
  
Draco shook his head and smiled as he stepped into the front entrance of Lori Porter’s home. Just as it had been when he left five years ago, the noise of constant music brushed past his ears, though the color scheme of the hall had changed somewhat. Draco studied the dark green and red drapings as he waited for an attendant to find him.  
  
“Delighted to serve you!” A laughing woman in white whirled up, her dark hair gathered into a net of thin black strands studded with tiny pieces of obsidian, onyx, and ebony. It made her face look pale and large, higher in the forehead than Draco thought was natural. She dropped a flawless curtsey to him and reached out to take his cloak. “The mistress is holding court on the other side of the room, if you wish to greet her.”  
  
Draco smiled and nodded, then slipped the woman a Galleon. Lori Porter preferred human servants to house-elves, because house-elves offended her aesthetic sensibilities. Draco had heard from Blaise that Harry’s friend Granger got on well with Lori, though trying to make Lori do anything political was impossible.  
  
With that, he stepped out of the darkly glowing entrance hall and into the Perpetual Party.  
  
Lori Porter was the last of a long and distinguished pure-blood line who had been interested in accumulating money instead of power, and were widely suspected of having used Time-Turners to travel back and start accounts in multiple banks around the world. Or so the rumor went. No one Draco knew had ever pretended to have uncovered the source of the Porters’ enormous wealth. Apparently, the people Lori dealt with were only concerned that she had it.  
  
Lori had decided that she didn’t want to marry, have children, or dabble in politics, which left attending parties as the only respectable activities for someone of her family’s age and rank. But leaving one party to attend another bored her, so she simply started a single large festival in her house and left it going at all times. When she wanted, she could leave and rest; her guests were happy to eat, drink, dance, gossip, and listen to music without her, and her human attendants traded shifts throughout the day to welcome them.  
  
The Perpetual Party had started two years before Draco left England. He wondered idly if it would ever stop. Of course, there was no reason it should as long as Lori had the money and the interest. Who said that every pure-blood had to be ambitious and sophisticated? Draco’s class needed its clowns as much as the Muggleborns did.  
  
He paused thoughtfully, and wondered if that was one reason for Harry’s request to meet him here, which had rather surprised Draco at first.   
  
For the present, Lori had adopted an underwater motif. More dark green hangings covered the walls, blending with dark blue hangings and elaborate murals of waves and aqua tiles and the largest ultramarines Draco had ever seen. Fish swam past his face, well-done illusions of angelfish and dolphins and the occasional shark. Shells crunched under his feet; Draco glanced down and saw that the entire floor had been redone in them. Sparks of golden magic arched up and renewed the shells as each top layer was crushed.  
  
Lori held court on a coral throne in the middle of a circle of adoring men and women. She’d grown her golden hair long, and a siren’s tail had replaced her legs. Draco shook his head. Knowing how far Lori would go in pursuit of a conceit, that might even be a real Transfiguration, instead of simply glamour.  
  
“Draco. Thank Merlin.”  
  
Draco turned around in some concern, wondering if Harry had been harassed by people who recognized him. But Harry simply smiled at him, a brilliant flash that made Draco feel more dazzled than the ultramarines had, and linked his arm through Draco’s. “Come on. I think the food without experimental potions in it is over here.”  
  
Draco laughed and let himself be led. He was exulting in the thought of the picture they must present, and still more in the fact that the admiration they attracted at the Perpetual Party was likely to be entirely aesthetic. He didn’t want Harry to feel pressured to perform today. “Had the experience of waking up with your cock gone invisible, have you?”  
  
Harry snorted. “No, but it does take an awfully long time to stop thinking one is a sea turtle when one’s been wallowing on the floor half the morning.”  
  
The sideboard of “traditional” food ran along most of the far western wall of the room. The majority of it was seafood, Draco noticed, and the water tasted salty. For all that, he managed to achieve a satisfactory plate of frogs’ legs, lobster, and oysters. Harry slapped a thick piece of salmon between two slices of bread that he’d found Merlin knew where and took a large gulp of salty water. Draco winced.  
  
Harry met his eyes with a challenging gaze. “What, I’m not being dainty enough for you?”  
  
Draco carefully shook his head. “It has nothing to do with that,” he said truthfully. “I was wondering how you were able to drink all that salt without wincing.”  
  
“I’ve been here long enough to develop a taste for this,” Harry admitted. “Porter’s had the same motif for the last six months.” He took an enormous bite of fish, and then ate it delicately enough, never opening his mouth, which Draco thought was more than he would have managed. “And saltwater tastes better than the flattery that I’ve had to pour on Emma Lansby’s head for the past eight hours.” He tilted his head back to rest against the wall and closed his eyes. A sunfish swam past his forehead.  
  
“Hard work?” Draco murmured. Yes, it was redundant, when he could already see the effects of that fatigue in Harry’s face, but it gave Harry a chance to complain, which Draco thought was principally what he wanted.  
  
“You have no idea.” Harry pried open an eye and snorted. “Did you know that all the blood purists in Britain are waiting on her orders? And that she could have Ernest Poppycock assassinated soundlessly in the middle of the night, and people would only quake in fear of her instead of trying to retaliate? Never mind that she would have taken over the country already if she had anything near that kind of power. Imagine trying to act as if you believe that.”  
  
Draco winced again, but more sincerely this time. “I’m surprised that you chose to come here, after that,” he said, moving on to what he had wondered about when he first stepped into the Perpetual Party. “Haven’t you had enough of blood politics and polite manners for one day?”  
  
“Blood politics isn’t the same as the presence of pure-bloods,” Harry said. “And I knew that any pub I could go out to tonight, even with my friends, would only involve me in the politics again.” He used his free hand, the one not clutching the dripping sandwich, to make a slashing gesture around the room. “No one talks about that kind of thing here.”  
  
“But they’re still pure-blood,” said Draco. “I’m…surprised that you haven’t become sick of us all after having to deal with people like Lansby.”  
  
Harry met his eyes, and said, unsmiling, “I like some pure-bloods.”  
  
Draco caught his breath, and felt warmth like sunlight move through him.  
  
“Not to mention,” Harry added, “that I like some of their manners and their customs, too. _Some_ , not all. Maybe thirty percent.” He looked around the Perpetual Party and the whirling, laughing, munching, talking crowd. “I wanted to come to a place where I could see beauty and be around people who are far too polite and interested in other things to mention politics when they realize that you don’t want to talk about them.”  
  
Draco felt as though someone had picked him up like a rug and beaten most of the tension out of him. So Harry _did_ recognize that he could like pure-blood customs and manners separately from the people who made such great nuisances of themselves in his daily life. And obviously not everyone was a nuisance, given that he had just acknowledged Draco’s family background.  
  
He wished he could say something back. Appearing at the Three Broomsticks with Harry last night was the beginning of showing Harry that Draco wanted to be comfortable in his world, too, but he didn’t know it nearly as well as Harry knew this one. He had no idea what an appropriate gesture would be.  
  
Then he decided that, since Harry had chosen to come to this party instead of being forced to do it by the exigencies of his job, and since he had mentioned a liking for beauty, Draco might as well act like a pure-blood for tonight. He held out his hand. “Do you care to dance?”  
  
Harry gave him a startled look, but quickly it became a smile. He finished his fish sandwich, handed his cup of salty water to an attendant who conveniently appeared just when he was wanted—as they always did—and then clasped Draco’s fingers. “Let’s.”  
  
The music was constantly changing, and various kinds clashed with one another, so that one only had to choose the part of the room that suited one’s mood. Draco saw couples doing waltzes, pavanes, wild dances that had no name he knew, and dancing that was practically sex with clothes on. He wondered which one Harry would choose.  
  
Harry dragged him straight to one of the places where gentler music played, and began to pull Draco through a slow pavane. Draco adjusted at once, and placed a possessive hand on Harry’s back, just so that no one else would think they had the right to interrupt.  
  
Harry smiled at him with half-open eyes and sighed as the music swirled upwards, tugging Draco’s imagination with it. He watched as light sparked off Harry’s robes—red and gold, and still tasteful, for a miracle—and thought about how soon he’d be able to pull them off. He watched the graceful motions of Harry’s feet and thought about how long it had taken him to learn to dance like this.   
  
He could still remember the schoolboy who had floundered around the dance floor at the Yule Ball and taunted him, if he tried. But the reality of the strong, confident man in front of him melted through the fancies and sent them spinning. This was the man he desired.  
  
He thought about how soon they could go to bed.  
  
Harry leaned forwards and pressed his lips to Draco’s again as the dance music finished. Draco stroked a hand through his hair and slipped his tongue between Harry’s easily parted lips. The kiss lasted longer than the one the previous night had, and was more thoughtful and considered, Draco thought.  
  
It also made him pant harder. He surged forwards, pressing his erection into Harry’s waiting one. Harry gasped, his mouth falling open wider. Then he shook his head and stepped away.  
  
“Not yet,” he murmured. “I’m too tired tonight to be of any use to you.”  
  
Draco recognized the excuse for what it was, but he could still bow and then escort Harry off the dance floor and go on talking, because he also recognized that the reality of Harry meant he wouldn’t allow himself to back away forever.  
  
*  
  
Harry paced his front room, filled with energy that he was startled to possess after today. If nothing else, the dances he’d had with Draco should have released it and made him collapse into bed with a sense of gratitude.  
  
Instead, he paced, and his robes swung around his ankles and hissed on the carpet the way he would have liked to hiss at Lansby.  
  
Then he gave in and ducked into his bedroom, dragging off the robes as he went and letting them fall to the floor. Any small tears or dust motes that they picked up would be easy enough to clean off later. At the moment, what Harry needed most was to quell the fire dancing up and down with short, sharp jabs in his abdomen.  
  
 _Draco._  
  
He seemed to be everywhere around Harry, though Harry clearly remembered walking away from him at the Perpetual Party less than an hour ago. His face was bright with laughter when he didn’t remember to control it, and with other flickering, suppressed emotions that Harry wanted to learn how to read. Just because he understood the culture of the pure-bloods didn’t mean that he understood every individual within it.  
  
He fell on the bed and reached out, stripping off his pants with one impatient hand so that he could get the other on his cock sooner.  
  
 _Ah, Draco. Draco_. He moaned the name aloud, although that didn’t have quite the same resonance as the word did in his thoughts. His hand jolted up and then down, almost painfully abrupt. He tried once to stop himself and be a little gentler, but that didn’t work. His hand sped up again as if of its own volition.  
  
He thought of the way Draco had moved in the dance, the way he had darted looks at Harry with the same fascination that Harry had used on him, the way his hand had settled on Harry’s back and he didn’t seem happy when it wasn’t there. He thought of the swinging, swaying hair, the slightly parted lips, the very slight lift of his chin when someone looked too hard at him. Harry bet that Draco didn’t even know he made that last gesture, as if he were daring the world to find fault with him because he had done a few stupid things once.  
  
The flashes of fire in his gut roiled and burst into flame.  
  
Harry arched his back and grunted as he came. The pleasure continued longer than it should have, fine details of Draco’s language and face and personality traveling through his memory one by one and then lingering there.   
  
Harry fell limp and tired at last, and barely managed the Cleaning Charms that folded up the robes and dusted them and removed the semen from his thighs and hand. As he curled up on top of the sheets, too tired to get under them, he thought quite distinctly, _It’s a fine thing to be such a good observer that I can wank to what I notice about someone._  
  
And I’m sure Draco will be flattered when I tell him that he gave me sweet dreams.


	7. Chapter 7

  
Harry paused when he saw a slender man with dark hair ducking out of Lansby’s hospital room. He narrowed his eyes and glided out of sight into an empty room. The precaution was unnecessary, since the man was walking fast and didn’t look over his shoulder, but Harry felt compelled to take it anyway.   
  
He was almost sure, from the set of the man’s shoulders and the length of the hair, bound up into a tail with a single silver ring, that this was Marcus Tollhun, who really shouldn’t have been anywhere near Lansby. He was a blood purist, too, but of a faction that hated associating with half-bloods. Lansby had no objection to that as long as the half-bloods were “respectful” of her.  
  
 _Like me_ , Harry thought, and ran his thumbnail briefly across his teeth, thinking.  
  
Then he shrugged. He doubted that he would get any information about Tollhun by standing here. He walked down the corridor and into Lansby’s room, with a smooth step and a bright smile, as if he had nothing to worry about in the world.  
  
Lansby lifted her head when she saw him, but didn’t smile back. The bandage that ran down the middle of her left side, where Poppycock’s curse had struck her, was less red and thick this morning, Harry noted absently. He nodded to it and worked as much sympathy into his voice as he could. “You are feeling better?”  
  
“I need to know the true extent of your association with Draco Malfoy,” Lansby said. Her voice was almost a bark.  
  
 _You and Kingsley both_ , Harry thought. He had to spend less than a moment considering what tactic would serve him best here. He and Lansby didn’t share the bond of friendship that linked, or sometimes linked, him and Kingsley, and she would scorn softness.  
  
Harry stiffened his shoulders, froze the muscles of his face, and took a few steps nearer the bed, let bristling offense show from every pore. “You think to question me?” he asked. He had dropped his voice into a region of ice, as well, and it was one he had not so far used around Lansby. He saw her go still as the effect penetrated through the layers of her own pride. “You think that you may control which circle of pure-bloods I associate with? Am I your pet, to attend on only those you say I may attend on?”  
  
Lansby leaned back on her bed and winced as though her wound hurt, to gain time. Her eyes were clear, cold, and cautious as she responded, “I do not seek to control you. I _do_ , however, seek to establish what you are doing with Malfoy. There are associations with that name that—”  
  
“I know what the Malfoys did in the war,” Harry said. “I spoke for them. Narcissa Malfoy saved my life in the Forbidden Forest.” He didn’t think Lansby would accept that as an excuse for his interest in Draco, but he would try it. “I attended school with Draco. My familiarity with them extends further back in time than my familiarity with you.”  
  
Lansby’s eyes narrowed, and she twitched her head, as though she were trying to shake cotton out of her ears. _Good luck_ , Harry thought without mercy. _It won’t work unless you can shake loose all the contents of your brain_. “The name has associations with _failure_ ,” she said. “The Malfoys served a bad master and were fools enough to be caught in his downfall. And I assume, since you have been so close to him in the last days and weeks, that you have heard of Draco Malfoy’s ill-advised love affair.”  
  
Harry snorted. “I neither fought on their side nor have any interest in Malfoy’s previous lover.”  
  
Lansby’s voice rose dangerously. “If you have any interest in staying with me, in learning of the wonders that I have promised you, then you will need to give him up immediately. It does not matter where your interest lies. It must lie _with_ mine.”  
  
Another pause, while Harry’s brain worked rapidly. He had some idea, now, of what Tollhun must have told her. While Tollhun and Lansby struggled for control of the blood purist leadership, neither had any reason to love the Malfoys; Harry knew that Lucius Malfoy had tortured at least one Tollhun family member during the war.  
  
The “wonders” she had promised him were introductions to other blood purists, those who either kept their beliefs private or weren’t on the Ministry’s map for other reasons. It would have been valuable to know who they might have to suspect of attacks on Muggleborns and half-bloods, to say nothing of attempts to unseat the Ministry itself.   
  
_It would have been._   
  
Harry made his decision, and he found little regret in himself as he met Lansby’s eyes and said, “My interest declines to lie with yours.”  
  
Lansby’s lips parted a little, and she stared at him with utter bewilderment. Harry, staring back, could only deduce that she had not expected this, had retained some faith in his loyalty to her even after Tollhun warned her that he was dating Draco.  
  
Harry stared back emptily. He was not sure what effect this would have on his future course of trying to figure out the blood purists’ activities, though he strongly suspected Lansby would have demanded he give Draco up no matter what soothing words he found. Whatever Tollhun had said was too convincing.  
  
He only knew that he could not give up Draco, even for the sake of a temporary deception. And who was to say that it would be temporary? Harry had already worked seven or eight months to come this far into Lansby’s confidence. It might take years more before she would really trust him and admit him to her counsels.  
  
Then, too, there was bitter experience of his first year among the pure-bloods that he so rarely let himself remember. He had thought, then, that he could sleep with someone he hated and keep his pride and heart separate from his body. It had not worked. He had refused, on any account, to let what arrogant pure-bloods wanted dictate his lovers since.  
  
But all that was so much smoke and wind. At bottom, he simply refused to give up Draco. That was all.  
  
 _And if I’m not going to let Emma Lansby and Kingsley stand in the way, then I shouldn’t let my fear stand in the way, either._   
  
Those thoughts whipped through Harry’s head like streams of fire and then vanished into nothingness as Lansby lifted herself from the bed and pointed a shaking finger at him. Harry saw a true splash of new blood fall from her wound. She didn’t seem to care.  
  
“You are banished from my presence,” she whispered. “There is nothing that will ever bring you back into my good graces. There is _nothing_ you can do that will convince me you are an ally. Tollhun was right, and I a fool ever to have listened to you.”  
  
Harry bowed. “If you feel that way about it,” he said mildly, because he knew mildness would exasperate her far more than anger, and turned and left her hospital room before she could throw something at him.  
  
The air in the corridor of St. Mungo’s wasn’t really all that different from the air in Lansby’s room, but Harry took a deep breath of it nevertheless. He felt as if it had walked out of a trap that was fast closing in on him.   
  
He could deal with other pure-bloods. He could see them as people and their manners as customs to be laughed at or adopted. But the blood purists made him feel as if he were slogging through chest-high shit, and he didn’t like the person he became when he was pretending to share their opinions.  
  
 _This was the right decision, whatever the consequences._   
  
One of the consequences would be an immediate report to Kingsley. Harry went to make it.  
  
*  
  
Blaise had that look that he always got when he had news that he knew Draco would want to hear but which he preferred to keep to himself for the moment—simply so that he could torment Draco. His lips were pursed, his eyes narrowed as though he were squinting against the sunlight or to keep from crying. He would stare at Draco, then look away again when Draco tried to catch his gaze.  
  
Draco put up with it for a few hours. They were out watching the house-elves guide the two winged horses that Blaise had recently bought through their paces. The horses were too young to fly yet with a rider, but watching them was a positive pleasure. They were black Abraxans, with snow-white manes and white left forelegs. Draco relaxed as he watched their muscles flex and light ripple off their coats as if moving underwater. He had forgotten such pleasures in America, where Paul seemed keen to avoid any “mere” beauty.  
  
Eventually, though, Draco said, without looking away from the horses, “Tell me what you know about Harry.”  
  
It was worth the long silence to hear the scrape and rustle of Blaise’s robes against the chair he sat on. Then he took a long, unconvincing sip of his drink. “What makes you think that I know anything about Potter?”  
  
“Please.” Draco raised an eyebrow at him. “You obviously want me to ask what you know, and who else would I be interested in news of?”  
  
Blaise sighed, as though to say that Draco was heaping difficulties on him, and then said, “It seems that Potter has broken with Emma Lansby.”  
  
Draco felt as though he was watching Harry dance again, so deep was the surge of pleasure that passed through him and left him panting in the wake of it. He tilted his head back and concentrated on the sunlight that played across his face, so he wouldn’t sound absolutely silly when he spoke again. “Did you really doubt he would?”  
  
“Yes.”   
  
Draco glared at Blaise, his good mood dampened. Blaise shook his head slightly. “Potter is a political person,” he said, “and he’s always been the Minister’s creature. I thought he’d do anything for the advantage, including betraying his own heritage to associate with Lansby and—” He hesitated.  
  
“And giving me up,” Draco finished. He couldn’t really blame Blaise, but irritation joined the pleasure anyway. “That was one reason you were so reluctant to see me dating him.”  
  
“You looked shattered when you first came here,” Blaise said bluntly. “I didn’t want to see that happen again.” He leaned across the gap between their chairs and shook Draco’s shoulder. “You made a fool of yourself over Breaker, but you’re still my friend, and I think you’re vulnerable. Potter is more dangerous to become infatuated with than anyone else I can think of, except maybe Granger or the Minister.”  
  
Draco spent a few moments watching him with a faint, warm smile on his face, the only expression he would permit. Blaise, though he rarely expressed such “soft” emotions aloud, was still his friend, and didn’t want to see Draco hurt.  
  
“I think I know what kind of ground I stand on with him,” Draco said. He rarely expressed things like this aloud, either, but Blaise had taken some risks for him, and Draco didn’t want to appear unappreciative. “Neither of us is certain yet that we want to stay with the other. It’s more than a bit of fun, but it’s not what I felt for Paul, either. Or what I thought I felt for Paul,” he was compelled to add, as Blaise’s eyes darkened with concern. “We’ll move slowly, and I think I’ll be all right.”  
  
“You _think_ ,” Blaise said, and snorted, and leaned his head back against the chair, directing his gaze at the horses again. “Some of us are the ones who’ll have to put you back together if you fall apart over Potter, so some of us would like a stronger assurance than your thoughts.”  
  
“And some of us can’t give them, yet,” Draco replied sharply.  
  
Blaise grunted. Draco decided he was satisfied enough. He looked back at the horses, too, and started plotting where he would take Harry for a celebratory dinner.  
  
*  
  
“Do you mean to give up peacekeeping among the pure-bloods entirely, then?” Kingsley’s eyes were somber.  
  
That was the sort of challenge that would have taken Harry in five years ago. But his training had included the best ways to spot logical fallacies and come up with arguments to counter them, and this was a fallacy in the best style. Kingsley was taking an extreme stance, when Harry had offered a moderate action.  
  
“I mean to give up trying to convince Emma Lansby,” Harry disagreed peacefully, “since she is unlikely to let me near her again no matter how persuasively I speak. I do not mean to give up our longer-term projects.” He sat back in his chair and smiled slightly as he watched the shadows of frustration move over Kingsley’s face.  
  
“Emma Lansby is currently the greatest threat we face.” Kingsley toyed with a quill between his fingers.  
  
 _Lying_ , Harry thought, his eyes following that telltale. _Or at least he’s exaggerating the truth, and aware that he’s exaggerating_. “No,” he replied, “I would disagree. And I think you will allow that I know the inner circles of the pure-bloods better than you do.”  
  
Kingsley opened his mouth to speak, then closed it with a sigh and motioned for Harry to go on.  
  
“The greatest danger,” Harry said, “is that the pure-bloods will find some powerful and charismatic leader they can follow, who will unite them the way Voldemort managed to unite them and persuade them to forget about their petty differences. Without that, however? I think they will cause wildfires, but only that. Not a wholesale burning of the British wizarding world.  
  
“And you forget, Kingsley—” _or you haven’t thought enough about it altogether, since you have people like me to think about it for you_ “—that those petty differences are the heart of pure-blood culture. Entire alliances can chill because someone wears the wrong color to a party or makes a single careless remark.” Harry cocked his head. “That was the reason I had to train so long to enter the circles I now traverse, because by nature I am not an observer of such reactions. But now that I know enough to master the conventions, we can make this work for us. I can work to exacerbate those petty differences and keep their pride alive. Individuals might feel hostility towards Muggleborns. My task isn’t to change those prejudices and feelings altogether—though I will do what I can to soften them—but to keep those individuals from finding one another and growing into strong coalitions. And if I see another Voldemort, I intend to eliminate his prospects for advancement before he can come anywhere near so far as the one we know about.”  
  
Kingsley leaned back in his seat, eyes shadowed. “I would feel better if I simply know why you are so hostile to the suggestion to give up Malfoy.”  
  
“Because it impinges on my freedom and on his.” Harry laughed when Kingsley stared at him in disbelief. “Is it so remarkable that I should have boundaries and freedom, sir? Or do you find the idea of _his_ boundaries and freedom incomprehensible?”  
  
“You barely know him, Harry,” Kingsley said. “You have not dated him for years. You do not know whether you’ll stay together.”  
  
“No one _knows_ at the beginning whether they will stay together,” Harry said, letting his irritation color his voice. Now Kingsley was saying nonsensical things, as if he thought that he had to locate truth if he simply launched enough random words into the air. “Ron’s told me that he had doubts about his marriage at times, and Hermione told me about her doubts, too—different ones. I know many people who are either divorced or living separately. I know other people who met suddenly and dated rapidly. If you are demanding a certainty of me that you don’t enforce on your other people, Kingsley, then you are holding me to an inhuman standard that I can’t attain no matter how much training I undergo.”  
  
“I simply worry that Malfoy could endanger your chances to be successful at your job,” Kingsley said, “by distracting you when you should be watching out for the next Voldemort.”  
  
Harry leaned forwards, staring at Kingsley until he hesitated. “ _If_ that were the case,” Harry said at last, “then I would choose Draco over my job.”  
  
“I find it hard to believe that you can care about him that much,” Kingsley said stiffly.  
  
“I don’t care about your belief, sir,” Harry responded. “And if you try to impose limits on me that others don’t have to follow, then I repeat, that is inhuman, and I will leave.”  
  
For long moments, they sat in silence, with Kingsley staring at Harry as if trying to will him to back down and Harry staring back. He was confident. If it came down to a choice, Kingsley needed Harry too much to force him away from the Ministry. He might distrust Draco, he might whinge about it, but he would put up with it.  
  
Kingsley finally grunted and looked away. “I do hope that Malfoy won’t draw you into any ill-considered alliances,” he said.  
  
“Trust my training to keep me out of such entanglements, sir,” Harry replied, keeping his voice soft, almost deferential, as he rose to his feet and retreated out of the office. He had won the battle he cared about. It was only diplomatic to let Kingsley have the petty victory that could reassure him he was still in control.  
  
 _Yes, trust my training. And Draco’s lack of interest in things like that._   
  
*  
  
“Draco.”  
  
Harry’s voice was warm in spite of the fact that there were people watching them. And three of those people were his friends. Draco blinked, then reached out tentatively to accept Harry’s hand.  
  
He had gone to Diagon Alley because Astoria had complained delicately for a few minutes about the lack of roses to decorate the tables for that afternoon’s private party and the house-elves’ lack of skill in choosing precisely the _right_ flowers. He had not realized that he would run into Harry as he walked from the florist’s to his Apparition point. Granger, Weasley, and a red-haired girl who must be Weasley’s sister looked no less shocked. Then there was the peering public; Draco saw plenty of people starting to pay attention over their shoulders when they realized _exactly_ who Harry Potter was greeting.  
  
But Harry stepped up to him and clasped his hand as though they were alone, then kissed him on the mouth. He didn’t use his tongue, luckily, and Draco realized he’d been silly to fear that Harry would; Harry knew something about the limits of good taste and decorum now. But he kissed Draco long enough and enthusiastically enough to calm any doubts in the minds of observers about their being just acquaintances.  
  
Harry drew back and gave him a self-satisfied smile. His friends shook off their daze and began to move forwards.  
  
In the moments before they arrived, Harry lifted his head and breathed against Draco’s ear, “Sorry if I caught you off-guard, but I wanted to make it clear to them that you _are_ important to me.”  
  
Draco blinked, had time to think that someone else must have pushed Harry into trying to say that Draco wasn’t important, and then faced Harry’s friends with Harry firmly at his side.  
  
Granger had grown into her teeth, though she would never have a handsome face or figure, with all that mass of curling hair. She studied him, nodded shortly, and said, “Harry did mention something about dating you.”  
  
Draco kept his voice exactly as cool as hers was. He was the one on the defensive here, and though he often disliked that position, in some ways it was easier, as he had only to react to their reception of him instead of trying to think frantically through all the possible ways he might offend them. “He mentioned that you’re doing well.” Harry _had_ dropped a remark to that effect when they were at the Perpetual Party. “I believe you’re still fighting for house-elves?”  
  
Granger searched his expression for some insult. She’d become uncomfortably sharp, Draco thought, her gaze almost a match for Professor Snape’s in the way it probed.  
  
But then she inclined her head and said, “Yes, I am, and the fight is going fairly well.” She glanced over her shoulder. “I’d like to present Ron Weasley and my sister-in-law, Ginny Thomas.”  
  
Draco stifled a chuckle. _Did she think that we might not recognize each other_? But he saw Granger’s gaze became sharp again, and he decided that she was probably trying to offer everyone the most polite way out. He bowed, therefore, and murmured some words that he could never remember after that moment.  
  
They must have served the purpose, though, because Harry tightened his hold on Draco’s hand and looked fiercely proud, and the two Weasleys, or the Weasley and the Thomas, didn’t try to murder him. Weasley himself went red in the face and muttered something ungracious, but he looked sufficiently mulish that Draco could restrain himself from responding in kind.  
  
Thomas tossed her hair over her shoulder and grinned at him. “I wondered when someone would finally capture Harry’s heart,” she said. “Didn’t think it would be someone like you.”  
  
“Someone male?” Draco asked. He was going to take the politest interpretation of her words that he could, since otherwise he was likely to forget that these were Harry’s friends.  
  
“That,” Ginny said. “And someone pure-blood. Harry’s been quite adamant so far about insisting that he’d never date a pure-blood, because he thinks the lot of you are shallow.” She turned and faced Harry, her expression lively with curiosity. “So what changed your mind, Harry? You were denouncing them as recently as a month ago.”  
  
“I’d be curious to know that, too, mate,” said Weasley. He looked a little less red now, but he still peered at Draco as if he expected him to transform into a horned toad at any moment.  
  
Harry laughed. Draco blinked at him. He had changed, too. He didn’t seem to mind the people who were peering at them, and he didn’t wear the polished manner that he did in any pure-blood setting. He faced his friends with a slight challenge in his stance, even, as though he knew he could argue with them and they would still be his friends.  
  
 _They’ll accept me_ , Draco thought with sudden, bone-solid certainty. _They might not be thrilled about it, but they’ll accept me. They care more about his happiness than they do about things that happened ten years ago._  
  
“A month ago, I did think the same thing I’ve always thought,” Harry said, with a small shrug of his shoulders. “A month ago, I didn’t know Draco.” He smiled and reached up to lay the back of his hand, fingers folded, against Draco’s cheek.  
  
Draco swallowed, unable to know what the right words to speak would be. Harry’s fingers spread out on his cheek, and he smiled more widely, then leaned in to take another small kiss. Draco found himself unable to respond except by flattening his hands out on Harry’s shoulders and holding him in return, though his cheeks stung with embarrassment. He remembered their audience—all the levels of it—if Harry had forgotten.  
  
“And it’s as simple as that, is it?” Weasley asked when they broke apart, his voice heavy with skepticism.  
  
“Hush, Ron,” Thomas said, with such imperious authority that Draco was taken aback. “If they’re happy together, then I don’t think we need to worry about whether it’s simple or complex. And if Malfoy’s all wrong for him, then Harry will see sense and back off eventually. He doesn’t need a nursemaid to look after all his decisions the way you do.”  
  
Weasley began to protest, but Thomas cut him off by turning to Draco and giving him a vaguely threatening smile. “Of course,” she said, “if you and Harry break up and you’ve hurt him before you do it, then I’ll have to cut your fingers off one by one and feed them to sharks. I’m sure you understand.”  
  
Draco managed to nod, and then add, when it looked as though she was waiting for a verbal answer, “Of course. I would do the same thing to someone who hurt Harry.” _And I think he would do the same thing to someone who hurt me_. It did make him curious to know what Harry would do to Paul if Harry believed in revenge.  
  
“Good,” Thomas said. “Then that’s settled, and I think we can like you when you give us a chance.” She nodded to Draco, grabbed both Weasley and Granger’s hands, and herded them off. Weasley glanced back at him, grumbling, and Granger glanced back with eyes that were so bright and sharp and distasteful Draco could imagine cutting himself on them.  
  
 _One who accepts me without reservation, one who doesn’t, and one who’s waiting to see what I do_. Draco touched his forehead to see if he was sweating; he felt rather as he did when he managed to pass the practical portion of his Potions NEWT. _I can live with that, I think._  
  
“You were _brilliant_.”  
  
And then Harry was giving him another kiss, and Draco’s resolve to ask what had made him so enthusiastic melted in the face of his own desire.  
  
*  
  
“You look picturesque together,” Astoria Zabini told Harry. “It remains to be seen if you can look elegant.”  
  
Harry grinned at her. He and Draco were sitting on one side of the Zabinis’ dining room table while Astoria and Blaise occupied the other. Blaise hadn’t stopped scowling doubtfully at Harry since he entered the house, but he hadn’t said anything—for the same reason that Ron hadn’t complained that much, Harry thought, a mixture of shock and a reluctance to hurt his friend. Doubtless he would question Draco closely after Harry was gone.  
  
But after facing the challenge of Kingsley and the test of his friends, and winning both times, Harry felt ready to conquer the world. He gave Astoria a small bow. “You must think we could look elegant together, or you would not have placed us at the same table during your last party.”  
  
“That was Draco’s doing, and none of mine.” Astoria gave him a blank face that said he wouldn’t score points with her easily.  
  
“Ah,” Harry murmured, with a wise nod, “but you’re too good a hostess and too clever a judge of beauty to have seated us together if we looked horrible and would thus have done your party a disservice, no matter _what_ Draco wanted.”  
  
Finally, Astoria gave him a faint, cold smile. Harry treasured it as much as he would a larger one from someone like Hermione. It didn’t matter that he had to struggle so hard against prejudice of various kinds, and so did Draco; they would _make_ it.  
  
“There are some things that I would like to know,” Blaise interrupted. “Exactly how and when did you decide that you loved Draco, Potter?”  
  
Draco leaned on Harry’s shoulder for a moment. Harry glanced at him fondly. Even in the midst of his exhilaration, he knew that Draco was nervous about the answer to that question—and would probably be nervous no matter what answer he gave.  
  
“Some people started making noises about my giving Draco up,” he said quietly. “I’m still unclear on the _name_ to give my own feelings, but I know that I wouldn’t have felt that much resistance to the idea if I didn’t feel something strong for him.”  
  
“So external pressure is the only reason for this sudden declaration of sentiment?” Blaise smiled derisively. “And what happens when that pressure is removed? Will you as suddenly return to plain indifference?”  
  
 _It’s good that he’s defending Draco this strongly_ , Harry reminded himself as he curved an arm around Draco’s shoulders. _It means that he’s a true friend, and that he won’t let Draco go to just anyone, especially after what happened between Draco and Paul._   
  
“For five years, the most important thing in my life has been preventing another war on account of blood politics,” Harry said. “I’ve talked and danced and attended mindless party after mindless party—yours excepted, of course, Mrs. Zabini—for that one goal. I should have been willing to do anything to advance it. I thought I was. I was desperate to prove that I could still serve the wizarding world after I defeated Voldemort, and it was too dangerous for me to be an Auror. Why shouldn’t one driving purpose replace another? It seemed natural.  
  
“And then, for whatever reason, Draco started mattering to me. I don’t think I can explain it all.” Part of that was a lie; Harry could have given them _some_ reasons, but that would be turning over certain secrets that he suspected Draco didn’t want him to turn over. If Draco felt differently, he could always tell the Zabinis about them after Harry left. “Part of it was that he took the time to notice and challenge me. Many of the people I deal with from day to day are either my friends already and not in a challenging relation to me, or so self-absorbed that they never notice I’m not their perfect mirror.”  
  
Blaise snorted, and then looked sorry that he’d done it. Astoria’s cold smile grew a bit broader.  
  
“He proved that he was willing to meet me in the Three Broomsticks. Not the most posh of environments.” Harry looked at Draco. He rolled his eyes and reached up to push Harry’s fringe back from his forehead. A moment later, Harry could feel Draco’s finger tracing his scar. He smiled at him and looked back at the Zabinis. “At the same time, he has that intelligence and perceptiveness and politeness that I find myself unable to do without after so many years among the pure-bloods. I know that he’s not the only person about who has those qualities, but he’s the only one I’ve been interested in.” He spread his hands. “And there you have it.”  
  
Blaise squinted at him. “There must be more.”  
  
“Well, yes,” Harry said dryly, “but I doubt that you would appreciate hearing it in detail, Mr. Zabini, any more than I would ask what attracts you to your wife.” He looked at Astoria, paused long enough to stir excitement, and then added, “Never mind, I withdraw the question as too obvious. I might ask it the other way around, though.”  
  
Blaise flushed. Astoria laughed like someone clashing two champagne flutes together. “I tire of hearing only one side of the conversation,” she said, and turned to Draco. “What do you think, Draco? Are you happy?”  
  
Draco looked down. Harry glanced at him, and saw him biting his lip as though he were trying to stifle a smile. Harry blinked. _I didn’t realize I knew that. When did I pick that up? Somewhere in those hours of watching his face, I reckon._  
  
“Yes,” Draco whispered. “I know what you think.” He looked up at his friends defiantly, his face slightly pale, and Harry realized that he was seeing Draco’s openness in turn, the way Draco had seen Harry’s openness in front of his own friends. “I know that you think this is too fast, too swift after Paul. But for me, it’s not—not right now. Maybe someday we’ll wake up and this will pass like a dream. But for right now, this is what I want.”  
  
“My dear, of course I am not thinking that.” Astoria gave a little shudder. “I assure you, my thoughts express themselves much more eloquently and in complete sentences.”’  
  
Draco laughed, but it was muted. He glanced at Blaise. Harry squeezed Draco’s shoulder. Draco nodded back to let him know he’d felt the touch, but didn’t lean on him. Harry understood. Even Draco’s openness was guarded; he understood emotional revelation as taking a risk, so Harry doubted that the Zabinis had heard the full story of Draco’s time with Breaker. Draco wouldn’t see enough to gain from it.  
  
 _Which is another reason that I shouldn’t have brushed him off, that night at their party when he told his story to me._   
  
Harry refused to feel guilty, though. He’d had no way at the time of knowing that Draco’s story was genuine. He was glad that he’d found out, and he would support Draco from now on and do his best to nurture all the wounds of a broken heart. That would have to be enough.  
  
“I want to be happy,” Draco said. “At the moment, this seems like my best chance of becoming so.”  
  
He ended on a note that Harry suspected his own friends would have found too prissy by half. But Astoria and Blaise both nodded as though it were enough, and then Astoria rose to her feet and ordered them out of the sitting room, as she still had a party to prepare for.  
  
Draco almost dragged Harry into a small room down the corridor—except not literally, because that would have been too undignified, Harry thought, still struggling against unwonted hilarity. Then Draco turned to face him, staring earnestly into his face, and Harry’s impulse to laugh vanished.  
  
“I want to know,” Draco said, in a low, precise voice, “how much of this really is motivated by the desire to flick your fingers at your friends and the Ministry.”  
  
Harry reached out, skimming his hand down the side of Draco’s face. Such strength and such pride there, and behind both, such trembling vulnerability. Harry wanted, more than anything, to guard all of it, and help Draco so that someday he would feel perfectly strong again or able to express the vulnerability—whichever one it was that would make him most comfortable and happy.  
  
 _I want him to have whatever he needs._  
  
“Exactly as much as I explained to the Zabinis,” he said. “Shacklebolt pushed me too far by urging me to give you up so that I could be a better spy on Lansby. I refused. So I don’t know that I would have come to any knowledge of what I feel for you without that push.  
  
“But none of what I did today was a show for my friends, except in the sense that I want them to understand they _can’t_ harm you or insult you and not have it rebound on their heads.”  
  
“You’ve known me, _known_ me, too short a time to be certain of something like this,” Draco whispered.  
  
“And that’s why I’m not certain.” Harry used his thumbs to rub at the corners of Draco’s eyes. “Maybe it won’t work out, the way we thought it might not when we started talking about dating. I don’t think I’m in love with you yet. I just know that I like you a lot, and I want you, and I admire you, and the length of time I’ve known you has no connection to that. It’s simply happened.” He hesitated. “Is that enough for you? Or do you want something more?” Now that he was ready to move fully forwards into a relationship with Draco, it chagrined him to remember that he hadn’t really asked _Draco_ what he thought of the matter.  
  
Draco leaned forwards and rested his forehead on Harry’s chest in answer. Harry thought he could feel Draco’s eyelids trembling.  
  
“Well,” Harry said, stroking his fingers through Draco’s hair. “That’s answer enough for me.”  
  
And it was, even if Harry was unsure of the specifics. Draco could have all the time he needed.


	8. Chapter 8

  
Emma Lansby was gaping at them.  
  
That was not the main reason that Harry had suggested dancing with Draco during the Zabinis’ latest party—any more than having them dance together was the reason that Astoria Zabini had decided to have a party in the first place—but it was an enjoyable side-effect.  
  
Harry kept one eye on her as he steered Draco through the steps of a waltz he knew so well that there was no chance he would step on Draco’s foot during it. Lansby’s mouth had tightened into the arrogant sneer that so many blood purists wore so well by then. Harry wondered idly how he had put up with it, even for the sake of his job.  
  
There were some things the Ministry had no right to ask him to do. Violating his basic principles was one of them.  
  
“I’m over here,” Draco hissed into his ear. “Anyone would think that you were dating Lansby, by the way you keep turning your head.”  
  
“ _Someone_ ,” Harry said, swinging Draco skillfully out to the limits of his arms and then pulling him back in again without looking away from Lansby, “sounds petty and jealous.”  
  
“If I see that person during my fit of distinguished pique, I’ll be sure to tell him.”  
  
Harry turned back towards Draco, smiling at him as he brushed Draco’s fringe out of his face. Draco’s eyes were narrow, and he looked on the verge of stamping his foot with frustration. “As if I could look away from you for long,” Harry breathed into his ear. “See how often I do it for the rest of the night.”  
  
Draco raised a doubtful eyebrow as he stepped towards Harry and then whirled away from him into the next step of the dance. “I’m sure that I’ll lose count of how many times you do it before the end of the party.”  
  
But Harry was faithful to his promise. He hovered next to Draco as he sat down at their table, asking what he wanted to eat and drink and fetching it for him. He told Draco jokes that made him laugh just enough, in a dignified manner, so that no one looking over at them would see his red cheeks. He danced with him twice more; Astoria had provided enough music that those who liked both the most formal dances and those who could appreciate a slight relaxation of traditions could whirl around the floor at some point. He murmured soft endearments that Draco often ignored when he was chatting to someone else, but the rest of the time he listened with constant blinks, as if he thought that Harry must mean someone else with those extravagant words.  
  
Finally he coughed and ducked his head. “You don’t have to look at me that much,” he murmured. “I believe that you care more about me than Lansby.”  
  
Harry took up Draco’s hand and bowed his head low over it, letting his breath rather than his lips stir the small hairs on Draco’s s fingers and warm his skin. Draco stared at him with parted lips. “Is it embarrassing you?” Harry whispered. “Do you want me to stop? If the answer to either of those questions is yes, then I can stop.”  
  
“You’re only doing it because I mentioned Lansby and you wanted to prove a point,” Draco whispered back. From somewhere, probably the suspicion he’d just mentioned, he managed to add harshness to his tone. “That’s the part that I find embarrassing.”  
  
Harry dropped his smile and let his eyes stare straight into Draco’s. “Lansby is an excuse,” he said. “I’ve been wanting to do this for a few weeks now, to show you how you’re appreciated and coveted and cherished and admired, but I thought you might think it was too soon.”  
  
Draco briefly closed his eyes. Harry could sense the struggle he was having with himself. He was used to shielding his emotions in public and manipulating them for the best effect on someone else, but that was in part because few things in public would arouse any depth of emotional response in him. Harry was appealing to him on a level that would ordinarily be private only.  
  
Harry gazed at him and waited in silence for his answer. He would have stopped long since, except that he had seen the shining contentment come and go in flashes in Draco’s expression. Draco partially wanted this and partially did not. The final decision must lie with him, and Harry didn’t think he had the right to hurry it.  
  
Finally, Draco opened his eyes and said, “I think you’ve done enough for one evening. If you want to share something like this with me after we’ve gone home, then we’ll do that. For now, the embarrassment is too much.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Harry said, and squeezed Draco’s hand once, before dropping it to take his own chair. “I did want to ask you about that Quidditch game you dragged me to yesterday. What made you think the Cannons had a chance of winning?”  
  
“You didn’t tell me that they’d gone _that_ much downhill in the past five years!” Draco protested, his face brightening at once. “I’d heard the Falcons had an injured Seeker and a missing Chaser. Playing against a full Quidditch team should have been more difficult for them than that. A few Galleons on the Cannons seemed like a safe bet.”  
  
Harry gave him a pitying look. “Draco, it’s the Cannons. That’s all you need to know.”  
  
They spent the rest of the evening talking about things like Quidditch, winged horses—apparently Zabini had a pair of them that Draco was quite enthusiastic about—and how much paperwork Harry had to fill out in the Ministry. No mentions of Paul, or the war, or Harry’s friends or Draco’s, or the blood purists, or even Harry’s job beyond the minor griping about the Ministry. Harry had worried at first about how they would talk normally together. They would have to; not every conversation could be an intense series of emotional epiphanies. But they shared so many bad memories that his brain had seemed empty of subjects when he racked it.  
  
Not so. Draco could talk for hours on end about himself, and he instinctively avoided mentions of Paul, instead talking about the foods he liked, the time he had fallen from his broom as a child and broken his arm, why he still approved of house-elves despite the moral arguments Harry had absorbed from Hermione, what had happened the last time he’d got drunk in Blaise’s company, and numerous other things that Harry hadn’t known and couldn’t have imagined much interest in before this year.   
  
Harry propped his chin on his hand at one point and listened, happily, to Draco talking. His voice babbled like a running stream. He had actually slopped a bit of wine over the side of his glass as he waved it about in telling his stories and hadn’t noticed. Harry had dried it for him. Draco would be embarrassed if he saw it later.  
  
 _This_ was the kind of thing he had once feared would be impossible with a pure-blood lover, whose every word would be a guarded game. But Draco was perfectly willing to talk openly because Harry had placed privacy wards around their table before he started.  
  
Even if Draco had wanted to save some of the conversation for their homes, the wards would have been worth casting for the sake of the frustrated glances that Lansby kept darting them. Harry caught her eye once and stared boldly. She would now assume that their enthusiastic conversation was a plot against her.  
  
She promptly conjured a mirror so that she could look over her shoulder. Harry drowned his chuckle in wine and in enjoyment of Draco.  
  
*  
  
Draco told himself it was ridiculous to feel as if he were walking into a room with Paul in it. This was only a small pub, a place most of his acquaintances were unlikely to know existed, and the people in it were either strangers who would be indifferent to him or Harry’s friends.  
  
 _It’s the last category that’s the problem_ , he acknowledged to himself wryly, and then stepped through the front door, his head high, his cloak swinging from one arm. If he had to enter this place, then he would do his best to mix pride with casualness.  
  
Harry looked up from a table near the back of the room and smiled warmly at him. The people sitting with him—Weasley, Thomas, and a man Draco remembered after a doubtful moment’s survey as being called Finnigan—turned and peered at the door. More than one mouth fell open. Thomas grinned and extended his hand, and Finnigan grunted and dug out some Sickles. Apparently whether Draco would actually show up had been a matter of some debate.  
  
 _They shouldn’t have doubted me_ , Draco thought as he made his way past other tables where people seemed mostly to be pissed already, at seven in the evening, or arguing about Quidditch. _Why would they think that I would only accept Harry in the places where pure-bloods associate, and not go to the places where he feels most comfortable?_   
  
He ignored the fact that he needed to focus on the warmth of Harry’s smile to keep walking. That was a minor detail, and not for sharing.  
  
“So, Malfoy,” Weasley began as he sat down in the chair next to Harry and Harry slid a mug of Firewhisky towards him. “Harry tells me that you bet on the Chudley Cannons to win in their last game.”  
  
Draco stiffened slightly, but then glanced sideways with one narrowed eye and saw that Harry was completely relaxed. Harry gave him a subtle smile. Draco knew what that smile meant. _I told him about this for a good reason. Trust me._   
  
“That’s right,” Draco said, managing to drain his voice of most of the automatic hostility that it acquired whenever he encountered a Weasley. “I had heard that the Falmouth Falcons had sustained enough misfortunes they shouldn’t have been able to win. I listened to the wrong people.” He sighed and took a small sip of Firewhisky. The spell he’d cast on his mouth before he came in here would strip it of its alcoholic content and fill his mouth with water instead. Draco had no intention of getting drunk in this kind of company, or of tasting a drink that he hated. “Of course, I should have listened to my common sense.”  
  
“I respect someone who lets faith override his common sense sometimes,” Weasley said, so vehemently that Draco jumped. His nervousness wasn’t helped by Weasley reaching out and clapping him clumsily on the shoulder. “Because without faith, what is anything worth?” His face was red, which Draco had thought was a bad sign, but then he swayed gently back and forth in his seat, and Draco understood that he wasn’t seeing anger. “We _have_ to have faith. We have to believe in things larger than ourselves.”  
  
“That doesn’t always include a bloody Quidditch team that loses every game it plays,” Finnigan muttered into his mug.  
  
Not softly enough, as it turned out. Weasley leaned forwards and jabbed a finger at him that nearly took Finnigan in the eye. Finnigan cursed and ducked his head. “I _respect_ the Cannons,” Weasley announced to the rest of the pub. No one turned to look at them as far as Draco could tell, so the other clients must have been used to this sort of behavior. “They keep playing even though they have no chance! Bravery in the face of inevitable defeat! _That’s_ courage.”  
  
From there, the conversation evolved into a long and rambling argument that seemed to be mostly about how many times a Quidditch team had to lose before someone could be declared stupid for supporting them, and Draco was forgotten. He leaned back in his chair and looked at Harry.   
  
“You told him I supported the Cannons so he would give me a bit of that respect he was talking about,” he murmured.  
  
Harry met his gaze, his own eyes reflecting gentle amusement. “Yes. I was trying to make it easier for you to feel at home here and for him to accept you.”  
  
Draco sipped more of his fake Firewhisky and watched as Harry talked to his friends, laughing at what they said more frequently than he would laugh at anything in the company of pure-bloods, exchanging amused glances with Finnigan and Thomas over Weasley’s behavior, and making frequent attempts to draw Draco into the conversation. Draco repeated some of the things he had said a week ago to Harry about Quidditch at Blaise’s party. He feared they would bore Harry, but he received them with a soft delighted smile and the other people at the table treated his words as new and astonishing.  
  
It was far easier to get along with them than Draco had feared it would be. As the evening wore on, he began to relax and stop thinking they would attack him.  
  
That meant he had more time to watch Harry.  
  
Frankly, he was astonished that Harry had had so much trouble accepting that he had taken the pure-blood codes and made them a part of himself. Even here, in the presence of people he had every reason to trust, he was reserved, watching faces before he committed himself to expressing his thoughts, subtly manipulating his friends with mention of what he thought would make them accept Draco, restricting himself to smiles instead of open laughter. And Draco wasn’t oblivious to the fact that no more Firewhisky had passed Harry’s lips than his own. The only thing he ever drank deeply of was butterbeer.  
  
That helped to relax Draco, as well. Harry wasn’t really two different people, one when he was with pure-bloods and one when he was with everyone else, though he might have reason to think he was. That meant Draco was less likely to suddenly find a stranger in his arms.  
  
 _Or my bed._   
  
Harry had showered attention on him over the past month since they’d officially announced to their friends that they were dating, but hadn’t tried to push Draco further than kisses and one handjob. He hadn’t even suggested that Draco should stay the night in his house. He seemed to assume—  
  
Draco blinked. _Oh, of course. I thought it was strange that he was being so shy, but he’s probably assuming I’m the one who’s shy and reluctant to get involved with a lover after Paul. He’s holding back to give me as much space as possible._  
  
It was considerate of him. Kind. But Draco had had enough of kindness and consideration, and needed something else to assuage the ache that burned in his gut and groin.  
  
He waited until Weasley was roaring drunk and in the middle of a complicated argument with Finnigan over who had said what at a Quidditch game six months ago, and Thomas was involved in watching them. Then he slid his hand onto Harry’s thigh beneath the table and gave him a discreet squeeze.  
  
Harry turned his head towards him at once, though slowly enough not to draw the attention of any of his mates. Draco felt smugness run through him like warm water. _With him as my lover, I have the best of both worlds—politeness and courtesy and beauty and elegance, with someone who didn’t grow up in that world and understands the harsher aspects of it._   
  
He couldn’t feel anything but pity for the pure-bloods who had known Potter for five years and yet hadn’t managed to snap him up. He let some of that show in his face, mingling with the desire and impatience he felt.  
  
Harry shivered. Then he reached out and covered Draco’s hand on his thigh with his own, clamping down. Draco could read answering desire in his clenching fingers, and caution. _Not here._   
  
Draco rolled his eyes and squeezed back. _I wasn’t suggesting here, you idiot. Only letting you know I was interested._   
  
Harry inclined his head, a small smile playing around the corners of his mouth, and turned back to the debate between his friends. His hand stayed in place, and the next time he reached out for his drink, he managed to brush his arm gently across Draco’s shoulder.  
  
Draco closed his eyes and leaned his head back, letting his hair sweep down Harry’s neck. Harry visibly caught his breath—visibly to Draco, at least. He highly doubted anyone else at the table could see it even if they weren’t drunk.  
  
 _Finally. At last._   
  
Some doubts he hadn’t admitted harboring melted away. There was a line between respecting what Draco had gone through and holding him at a distance because he didn’t find him that attractive after all, and he had feared that Harry was on the wrong side of it. He should have known that, if anything was going to be the problem for Harry, it would be excess compassion. All the pure-blood training in the world couldn’t rid him of that.  
  
 _I’m glad._   
  
*  
  
Harry leaned against the door of his house with his heart roaring in his ears like a thunderstorm. He fumbled the key, and it fell to the ground. He Summoned it wandlessly, not even realizing the jump of his magic until he’d done it, and this time he managed to put it in the right place. He was more successful at removing the protective wards that needed to be gone before they could enter the door.  
  
Draco’s arm slipped around his waist, and he whispered into Harry’s ear, “How much discussion do you usually like before you do something like this?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Harry said, startled into honesty. “I haven’t done enough of it to be sure.”  
  
Draco froze, to the point where Harry would have thought he had vanished if he couldn’t feel his breathing. Then he hissed, “Please tell me that you haven’t reached this age and still stayed a virgin.”  
  
Harry burst out laughing, which pushed the awkward moment aside as effectively as anything could have. He turned around, grabbed Draco’s wrists, and pinned them gently to the wall next to the door. Draco looked up at him with hazy eyes and started trying to work a thigh between his legs.  
  
“I’m not a virgin,” Harry murmured. “The problem is that I haven’t felt able to be honest with my lovers in quite a long time. Either I was so famous they agreed to what I wanted without thought, or they were prickly enough that I went along with what they wanted because I was terrified of frightening them away.”  
  
Draco blinked, some sense surfacing in the haze of his eyes. “I have a hard time imagining you as terrified of anything.”  
  
“I’m terrified of hurting other people.” Harry turned and caught one of Draco’s fingers in his mouth, using his tongue to lap carefully around it. Then he sucked teasingly, until Draco was bucking and making small moans. Harry let his finger go long enough to say, “And I didn’t feel I could talk as openly with them as I can with you. Not all of them trusted me with the secrets of their pasts and what they absolutely couldn’t endure because it would hurt them, for example.”  
  
Draco took a deep breath and lifted his shaking hands until they settled on Harry’s shoulders. “I can understand why,” he said. “It takes a lot of courage to bare yourself like that, and in front of someone who seems as strong as you do.”  
  
“ _Seems_ ,” Harry said softly. “You were witness to the fact that I was lying to myself about something I should have recognized as the truth.”  
  
Draco lifted his head and licked Harry’s chin. Harry tried to keep his breath from escaping in a groan, but his chin radiated scintillating lines of warmth away to the rest of his body, and he made the noise anyway. Draco smiled smugly and hooked his fingers around Harry’s ear to hold him in place.  
  
“But you lie very well,” Draco murmured. “This is one place where I don’t want that deception, but you should know how much I value that you can _do_ it.”  
  
Harry felt as though someone had Healed a wound he’d been carrying around for years. He didn’t talk to his friends about his job much because he was afraid of their disapproval. Did they despise him for lying to and manipulating people and saying things he didn’t believe simply to get close to someone Kingsley wanted him to spy on? If they did, he didn’t want to know about it.  
  
But Draco valued his skills. That was _wonderful_. Harry lowered his head and kissed Draco for a few minutes, until both their bodies were thrusting against each other and they would be lucky if they didn’t have orgasms right here on the stoop.  
  
Harry wrapped a hand around Draco’s shoulders, closed his eyes, and rested his forehead against Draco’s for a few minutes until he got some breath back. “We were discussing what you’d like in bed, and what I’d like,” he muttered. “Or at least we were. Until we started discussing why we don’t often discuss that.”  
  
Draco’s laughter rattled up from his chest and made Harry’s hands on his shoulders vibrate. “This is new for me, too,” he said. “I believe that was the point of the discussion we got into.” He used one finger to trace Harry’s cheekbone. “To be perfectly honest, Paul and I—” He swallowed.  
  
Harry curved his hand around the back of Draco’s head and kept it there, offering comfort and support in silence. He would have offered to interrupt, but the sharp little motions of Draco’s chin at the moment suggested that this was something he needed to talk about.  
  
“He only wanted to do what _he_ liked in bed, and he didn’t want to change it often.” Draco’s bitterness seeped through his voice, but he took a shuddering breath, and a moment later, he sounded more contemptuously amused. “A creature of habit, he called himself.”  
  
“A boring creature,” Harry said.  
  
Draco chuckled against his throat, making Harry shudder and stretch his neck up, aspiring to more. “Yes. I’m glad I left him when I did, or I might have died of boredom, never mind outrage.” He cleared his throat. “At any rate, he usually wanted me to bottom on all fours, and take care of myself as far as coming was concerned. It was some _special treat_ when he let something else happen.” The bitterness was back in his voice again. “So, this time, I’d prefer to top, and in a way that lets me see your face.”  
  
Harry smiled and brushed the back of his hand up Draco’s cheek, mainly to watch his eyelashes flutter. “And if I were to say that I also prefer topping, and I think the perfect solution is for us to both shag each other tonight?”  
  
Draco had stilled at the first words, but now he looked up at Harry with a mixture of wonder and disbelief. “And you think we could really do that? What if one of us comes while the other’s fucking him?”  
  
“Then perhaps we can take that as a testimony to our lovemaking techniques and our knowledge of each other,” Harry said smugly, “and sleep a few hours until we’re ready to go again.”  
  
Draco’s cheeks flamed a more brilliant red than they had so far. Harry raised an eyebrow, and Draco shook his head slightly. “There is no other lover I would even _consider_ having this conversation with,” he muttered. “It would all have ended in hurt feelings and interruptions long before now. I would have thought something was wrong when you said that you preferred to top, that you were ignoring my request.”  
  
“Then, as I said,” Harry whispered back, “we should take this as testimony of our knowledge of each other.” He adopted a perplexed expression. “And shouldn’t you be claiming that it’s proof of your superiority to all those other misunderstanding people, and proof of your superior taste that you chose me?”  
  
Draco laughed again and pressed forwards, away from the wall, to crowd Harry with kisses until he almost fell off the stoop. “Absolutely,” he said. “I’m glad that we cleared that up.”   
  
Harry was smiling as he leaned against the door to force it open.  
  
*  
  
Harry naked was a sight that Draco could drink up, both because he was beautiful and because of the contrast with Paul.  
  
Paul had always leered and made dirty jokes when he was naked, as if it was something to be ashamed of. It got to the point where Draco was almost glad to turn over and look away from him, because at least that way he wouldn’t have to see the prurient gleam in his eyes as he looked at Draco.  
  
 _I should have left him long before I did. But the thought of people telling me “I told you so” was so painful…_  
  
Draco gave a mental shrug. He had already scolded himself for that, and he didn’t want to spend much more time thinking about it. It was as boring as all sex with Paul had become in the end.  
  
Harry, by contrast, strode about the bedroom taking off his clothes with energy like a living flame. He kept running his eyes up and down Draco’s body, concentrating on different parts of him—now his feet, now the clean length of his arms, now his hair, now his nipples, now his face. Draco spread his legs lazily, reveling in the way Harry’s eyes widened and his breath caught in a sharp hitch that puffed his chest out.  
  
 _He thinks I’m beautiful. He loves me, maybe. He cares for me, certainly.  
  
He thinks I’m beautiful._  
  
Even though Draco wasn’t chatting wittily at the moment. Even though he wasn’t showing bravery in facing up to Harry’s friends, or frequenting places they did. Even though he was doing nothing but lying here, practically putting himself on display.   
  
He could be beautiful just lying there.  
  
Draco happily contemplated this new idea until Harry approached the bed with a pot of lubricant in his hand and a face that shone with joy. He climbed onto the bed—Draco had been glad to see that the sheets were not an objectionable color—and bent over Draco, letting his hair sweep down his body, as he asked, “How do you want to do this?”  
  
“I said I’d like to top first,” Draco murmured. “That’s still true.”  
  
Harry managed to smile then, a smile that was brilliant and deep, but which washed off his face again in the next moment. He was simply feeling too much for a smile, Draco decided, and that sent another surge of power and pleasure through him. _I’m causing this. I’m causing him to lose control of his muscles, I’m so beautiful.  
  
Merlin, I am_ good.  
  
Harry lay back on the pillows, spreading his legs and urging his hips towards Draco. Draco hadn’t sat up fully or managed to reach the lubricant before Harry cocked his head around and said, “What’s taking you so long?”  
  
“Admiring your breathtaking impertinence,” Draco snapped, and dipped his fingers into the lubricant. He was probably harsher than strictly necessary in applying them to Harry’s arse, but Harry was grumbling and whining by then about how he might get better results if he tied Draco to the bed and sat on his cock, and Draco was feeling a bit irritated.  
  
Harry gasped when Draco stuck his fingers in, but then asked, “And what’s taking you so long now?”  
  
Draco stretched him open in offended silence and slid his cock in without asking if Harry was sure he was ready, which he’d intended to do. Harry gasped, then grinned at him and arched his hips up again, causing Draco to slide deeper with a small yelp.  
  
“You—you’re an idiot,” Draco said, when he had his breath back. It was an effort to speak that much. He wanted to toss his head back and pound and thrust and forget everything else. _Squeezing_ , oh God, and the fact that Harry was smiling up at him with perfect complacency made everything better.  
  
“Not at all,” Harry said, lifting his legs to Draco’s shoulders and then throwing himself backwards so that he leaned more comfortably on the pillows. “I wanted it rough, and I wanted it fast, and I got what I wanted, didn’t I?”  
  
 _He manipulated me. The bastard_. That deserved a punishing thrust, so Draco gave one, and then no others, because he was too overwhelmed by what was happening to _his_ body, the pleasure circulating through him like blood, to care any longer about the minor irritations that Harry had put him through. He braced his knees and fucked fast and hard, in celebration and liberation. Paul had denied him this. His own pride had denied him this. His childish attempts at revenge on Harry could so easily have denied him this.  
  
He had succeeded, against all the odds. And Harry was smiling up at him, or gasping, or distending his mouth in a wide gape that made him look like a fish and which Draco was going to taunt him about sometime when he had both breath and clear thoughts back and wasn’t in danger of throwing his back out in sheer joy.  
  
Harry linked his hands together behind his head, ostentatiously not touching his cock, and, his eyes on Draco and a devil’s smile on his face, squeezed down with his arse. Draco tried to yell, but it emerged as the wrong kind of yell when he came with a shudder that struck all the way down to his toes.  
  
Harry caught him as he fell on his chest and kissed him, first on the lips, then on the cheek, then on the neck. Draco, dazed and panting, was too limp to return the kisses properly for long moments, but then he rolled off to the side and hit Harry’s shoulder, hard.  
  
“I assume that’s my reward for giving you a good time?” Harry rubbed the forming bruise, but not even that had destroyed his idiotic grin.  
  
“You made me come before I was ready,” Draco said. “I was really enjoying that, and I wanted it to last longer.”  
  
Harry hesitated for a moment, and Draco saw his eyes squint as if he were holding back fear. Then he snorted and punched Draco in return. “I don’t think you _could_ have lasted longer, Draco. Your hands were shaking where they held me, and you were wearing this expression on your face like a constipated badger.”  
  
“My hands _were not_ shaking,” Draco said, because he refused to dignify the badger comment with a response.  
  
“Yes, they were.” Harry looked down contemplatively at his own hips. “I’ll have wavery finger-shaped bruises in the morning.”  
  
“You won’t.” Draco knew he sounded sulky.   
  
“Yes, I will.” Harry leaned forwards and kissed him before Draco could respond. “It was tremendous,” he whispered to Draco, “and _I_ enjoyed it. We’re going to have so many more chances to repeat this that very soon you won’t remember this first time as disappointing.”  
  
Draco made a small contented noise, and flopped back on the pillow beside Harry. He shut his eyes, because the room was spinning. And his hands were shaking, though he tried to hide them behind Harry’s shoulders so that Harry wouldn’t notice. That had obviously taken him more effort out of him than he thought, and maybe he wouldn’t have lasted all that long even if Harry hadn’t been such a bastard.  
  
Though he was not about to _admit_ that.  
  
Harry stroked his hair and his face with motions that felt absent, but then Draco opened his eyes and realized how intently Harry was watching him. He shivered a little, and lifted his face for another kiss, remembering that Harry had also wanted to fuck him. He opened his legs and rubbed his hip suggestively against Harry’s cock.  
  
Harry gasped and shut his eyes. “You’re right,” he whispered when he could. “Teasing is absolutely not fair.”  
  
“I’m not teasing,” Draco said. “Unless you’ve changed your mind and you want my mouth instead of my arse.” He eyed Harry’s cock speculatively. It was so red by this time that he thought Harry might come before Draco could get into position to swallow, but a quick squeeze should take care of that.  
  
“I thought you would be too tired for a second go,” Harry said, blinking as though Draco had given him an unexpected gift.  
  
“Well, I’m not,” Draco said, and reached out to pinch Harry’s nipples, because he thought Harry would probably come if he touched his cock right now, and Draco wouldn’t embarrass him like that for the _world_. “Are you ready?”  
  
*  
  
Entering Draco was like nothing he had experienced before.  
  
That was because it was _Draco_ , not because there was something so amazing about a warm arse that it stole all Harry’s words. But the way that Draco spread his legs open and lay still beneath him, gazing up with a trust and a reserve in his eyes that spoke of the world in which he’d been raised and which Harry shared, made Harry’s hands tremble as he slicked his cock with lubricant.  
  
Draco’s gaze dropped to Harry’s hands, and his eyelids drooped with satisfaction. “I see that you’re also going to leave fingerprints in the shape of shaking hands,” he murmured.  
  
“Shut up.” That came out a lot more harshly than Harry had intended, and he shook his head and cleared his throat before he tried to speak again. “How much preparation do you need?”  
  
“Start preparing me, and I’ll tell you when to stop,” Draco answered.  
  
Harry honestly lost track of time then, and of the number of fingers that he’d slid into Draco. He couldn’t look away from Draco’s face, the steady, unwavering stare and the way his lips parted as he whispered, “Another, now.” He never varied the wording. He never seemed to blink. Harry wasn’t entirely sure that Draco hadn’t hypnotized him.  
  
“That’s enough,” Draco said at last, and Harry’s hand slid free of his arse as if the word had been a physical push. He licked his lips absently as he reached out and lifted Draco’s hips higher so that he could reach it more easily with his cock. They were dry, and so was his throat. At the moment, Draco’s face was all the water he needed.  
  
“Higher. And _in_.”  
  
Draco’s voice did shake on the last word, which Harry was prepared to take as a sort of triumph—probably the only one he would get. He let his head fall back against the pillows as Harry pushed into him, and then he began to pant. The panting had Harry shoving forwards before he meant to, his hips surging and his eyes shutting in pure ecstasy.  
  
“Harder. Faster.”   
  
Harry didn’t mind the terse commands. Each time, the words reached into his body and urged it in new directions he hadn’t known it was capable of. It occurred to him, distantly, that Draco was in control of this lovemaking much as he’d been in control while Draco was inside him, but he didn’t worry much about it. If anything, it simply pointed out that he and Draco were a match in more than one way.  
  
“Open your eyes.”  
  
Once again, Harry obeyed before he knew what he was doing. He found himself staring into a pair of fathomless grey eyes, clearer and colder than he had thought they would be, considering Draco’s red face and mussed hair. Then Draco, still holding his gaze, did the same thing Harry had done and clenched down hard with his muscles.  
  
Harry didn’t have time to draw his breath in before he came. His orgasm was a scalding flood of pleasure, and the sight of Draco’s eyes followed him down into the midst of that pleasure, hovering in front of him, unreadable, shining, perhaps judgmental.  
  
When Draco smiled at him and reached out his arms to embrace him, Harry felt he had found his true release. He collapsed forwards and laid his cheek against Draco’s neck, murmuring, “Maybe next time you won’t be so lazy.”  
  
Draco froze. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asked at last, in a brittle tone.  
  
“You stole my technique,” Harry said. “I want to see what you can do when you aren’t plagiarizing.”  
  
He fully admitted he deserved it when Draco rolled over and hit him.  
  
*  
  
“Are you ready?”  
  
Draco turned, careful not to move the lines of his robes much, and met Harry’s eyes. “I should be the one asking you that.”  
  
“But you’re the one who looks as if he needs it asked,” Harry countered, and moved forwards to stroke the small of Draco’s back, safely out of sight for anyone who might look at them from the dining room. “Do you want to do this? I’ve met your parents socially before. I know how to give them a polite excuse if you need to leave.”  
  
Draco straightened his shoulders. He _wanted_ to leave. Every dinner he’d had with his parents since he came back to England had been tense and uncomfortable, which was one reason he’d been staying with Blaise and Astoria. His father took every opportunity to remind him that he’d said from the beginning Paul wasn’t good enough for Draco and that Draco would have been well-served to listen to him. His mother sat by with burning eyes and made occasional cutting remarks. Draco thought he’d made more progress in forgiving himself than they had in forgiving him.  
  
But he couldn’t keep running away forever. Harry had proven that. Draco had taken a risk regarding him—a double risk, considering that he’d tried to court Harry with a broken heart and when Harry seemed uninterested—and it had paid off. What remained now was for him to try that again.  
  
And to remember that the consequences of his risks could not be so evil, not when he had Harry at his side.  
  
“I want to do this,” he said, reaching out and laying his hand on Harry’s arm. “If we leave, it’ll be harder next time I want to face them. They’ll have more time to think of insults.”  
  
Harry leaned forwards and kissed his temple. “I love you, you know.”  
  
Draco’s breath seemed to freeze in his lungs. He started to turn, because that was the first time either of them had said it, and while he knew Harry _must_ mean it, he still needed to see Harry’s eyes.  
  
But the dining room door opened at that moment and his father leaned out, one hand clenched around the top of his cane as if he truly needed it for balance. “Draco,” he said, ignoring Harry entirely. “Come in.”  
  
Draco hid a sigh. They needed to perform for the public again, and there was no way that he could give Harry an obvious message, not with his parents watching.  
  
But he closed his hand down on Harry’s arm and squeezed—a hard, frantic, possessive squeeze, like the squeeze of his arse muscles around Harry’s cock, like his hands on Harry’s shoulders when they kissed in front of his friends.  
  
Harry smiled at him, a deep and dazzling smile, and Draco knew he had been understood.  
  
His father’s frown darkened, but Draco knew that Lucius had just as obviously _not_ understood the signal that passed between them.  
  
They walked into the dining room together, heads held high, strides perfectly matched, glancing neither to left nor right. But if anyone had been looking closely enough, they would have seen the cloth of Harry’s robe rucking under Draco’s fingers as he stroked his arm.   
  
No one else saw. No one else knew. They were in public, and intensely private.  
  
As he smiled at his mother and settled into the game both he and Harry had been born to play, Draco reveled in the contradiction.  
  
 **End.**


End file.
